Life as I see it

What's Important to Me

Classification: Sketchbook

Prompt: What social and/or political issues are important to you?

The issues that matter to me most are of course equal rights, education and immigration. Now when I say equal rights, I really mean true equality for everyone, no matter who you are, or where you come from. America is supposed to be a country where people are free, and I mean all people. "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" is what the founders said, what the failed to mention is that when they say all men, they mean all straight, white, cisgender, non-disabled, men. And I mean men, not people. Everyone else, well sucks to be them. 

But the fact is that they fought for freedom and liberty, and yet treat other people worse than they were treated. And even today, anyone who doesn't meet all those categories, is still considered inferior. Women work twice as hard as men, only to be paid half as much. LGBT people are discriminated against, and in some states, still not allowed to get married. People with disabilities are overlooked for people who aren't, simply because they are different. But all these stigmas and the hate, it has all been around for centuries.

Immigration is very important to most Americans, and for many, for the wrong reasons. The issue of Immigration came around, well I'm not really sure when, but the thing is, when people say they want the immigrants to be sent away, they really mean non-white individuals. They are totally fine with Europeans and Canadians moving here, everyone else can leave. They don't want these people coming here, and getting jobs and living their lives, and want to send them away. But the fact is, many are running away from danger and abuse. They are trying to protect themselves. And if someone says that they want all the immigrants gone, no matter what generation, I would love to remind them that technically the only people who aren't immigrants in this country are the Native Americans, and that if they want the immigrants gone, they should pack their bags and move to europe.

Now the biggest issue for me is Education. Our educational system, absolutely sucks. Our school system is modeled the way it was during the industrial revolution and has not changed since. Sure we have more modern equipment, but that's about it. And not to mention that teachers usually need to work three jobs in order to provide for themselves and their families. And don't even get me started on homework. 

Homework was originally designed to be a punishment. Now it's given out regularly and does absolutely nothing to help students learn. All it does is create a cycle that starts when the student has to stay up late to complete their homework. They don't get much sleep that night, and the next day they are so tired they decide not to do their homework and sleep. But the next day they're stressed because they need to stay up even later! This causes a cycle of lack of sleep, which leads to stress, anxiety and depression. Then there simply the load of it all. We are forced to carry heavy loads on our backs, every day, in order to be prepared for the day, this leads to bad posture, which leads to long-term back problems. Survey after survey has shows that all homework does is cause students to take on an increasingly negative attitude when it comes to school, which leads to a lack of motivation and with the cycle I already mentioned it just makes everything so much worse.

Then there's standardized testing, it sucks. First of all, who thought asking us questions about stuff we haven't learnt yet would be a good idea? Second there's the fact that it's unfair, because people with money are able to take classes to prepare for the exam, leading to higher scores. Not everyone can afford that. Lastly, some people are just bad at tests. They get stressed, they make mistakes and they don't perform as well as others. Their brain simply doesn't work like those of people who are good at tests. 

Basically all the specialists agree that basing decisions based off of a single test, as well as giving such tests to young children who are younger than 8 or 9 years old. I honestly cannot believe that this type of thing even happens. Critics have complained for decades that standardized tests were unfair because the questions require a set of knowledge and skills more likely to be possessed by children of privilege. The more money the child has, the more likely they are to succeed. Hell, the goal of these tests are to rank students! Not to determine the quality of education they are getting, and certainly not taking this into account when ranking them.

Students need to be able to choose between a few options, The SAT, ACT, a series of essays, a big project, things like that. This would ensure that students have equal chances at succeeding, because they can choose the medium in which they will perform best. However at the very least, offer free SAT and ACT prep courses that they can take during school hours, not during lunch. And hire people who know how to prepare them. Make it an elective and make SAT Prep more available for people who can't afford to pay 900$ for it.

Word Count: 898

# of Pages: 3