Darrell & Jess

Dear Diary,

This trip has been very moving for me. This week I was able to meet with one of Muchin's school counselor, Mr. Allen. I personally plan to be a high school counselor in the future so I had a lot of questions for Mr. Allen. Not only did Mr. Allen give me advice about career options, he also was able to provide me with more information about Muchin. Muchin is a great school because the counselors there spend an enormous amount of time helping students figure out their financial needs when applying to college. My high school definitely did not. Another reason why Muchin is a great school is because of the clubs they offer. This week I was able to attend a poetry club where I was able to create a poem; here's a few lines "Poems are crazy, stupid, and lovely. On the brightest of days, they are like butterflies..A sign of joy and serenity."

My experience this week has offered me a completely new perspective on the education system in this country and has led me to strongly question how much of an emphasis we put on quantifying knowledge. At Muchin, knowledge is quantified as soon as a student walks into the building when they enter their morning advisory and are met by their GPA displayed openly on the screen for the entire class to see. Knowledge is quantified by the echoes of teacher's frantically discussing how they are going to get their students to that highly sought after "23" on their ACTs.  Knowledge is quantified when a student cannot respond correctly to a question on the spot in 30 seconds in front of all their peers. This constant craze to assess and grade through a calculated, pragmatic system is certainly magnified by the Charter school approach, but, this week I realized it was not absent from my own high school experience. In my high school, similar talk revolved around grade point averages, SAT scores, service hours -- numbers to quantify and consolidate student worth into a comparable, standardized value. This week,  I have reflected on this practice and concluded that it is such a terrible approach to molding students into successful adults and workers as students are quite literally turned into automatons and robbed of their individuality. What's more disconcerting is that this obsession over standardized test scores only bolsters the ever-expanding Educational-Industrial complex, making students mere cogs in a greedy, capitalistic machine.  After this week, I have been convinced more than ever that education in this country warrants serious rethinking and reform.

**drop mic
Darrell & Jess