Subconscious Resistance

          I was originally going to make this a comment on Kasey's post, but it kinda developed into its own thing. The thing that sparked this was when she mentioned how, without school, how could we become the future engineers and architects? First of all, I think we can all relate to, or at least slightly feel the pressures to go into the STEM careers that get placed on us. We are all pressured and encouraged to take the hardest math classes, the hardest science classes, the hardest history classes, etc. After all, this is just to help us get into college, right?

          For as long as I could remember, whenever I thought about what I would do as a possible career path in the future, I would always feel a pressure to go into a field of STEM, and in sixth grade, I had decided that I wanted to be either an engineer or an architect. As I've experienced more and gone through the first two years of high school, I had thought that I had whittled it down to architecture. I mean, after all, I have always been pretty good at all of these math and science subjects. However, this year, my art teacher told us about biomedical rendering when we studied skeletons, which is basically the people who illustrate in science textbooks. I had literally just talked to Cilla about this today which is why it is on the forefront of my mind, but it is an important topic for me and my own future, and it helped get me thinking. Because I am more of an observational and detail oriented artist from my own observations about myself and am not as creative, this genuinely interested me. This got me thinking less about engineering and architecture, and I started thinking more about why I had thought about those things.

          I'm not completely sure what kind of mindset I currently have, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had more of a fixed mindset, and that would partially be because of laziness on my own part. However, I feel like with all of the pressure of STEM, I have been subconsciously resisting, and I've been searching for the thing that I truly want to pursue, and that may contribute to a sort of fixed mindset because I am pushing back against the subtle nudging forward that we are all no doubt experiencing. I feel like the worst thing you could do is either take all of the responsibility or take none of it, so I’m not going to act like I’m the only one with problems I need to address.

          With all of this STEM stuff, it seems like school isn’t being tailored for exploring the specific interests of individuals and is influencing them more into doing something that they have been pressured to do their whole lives. This is what Ken Robinson is talking about when he spoke about education being designed after a “fast food” model. He explains that everything is being standardized instead of things being specially localized. Not only that, he also gave an anecdote about someone he knew who became a fireman, despite his teacher telling him that he was wasting his life. He goes on to explain that people can be good at something, but not be passionate for it, and they end up dreading what they do and can’t wait for the weekend. In my own opinion based on observations from the videos and my own experiences, school almost feels like a robot factory, trying to program us instead of helping us to develop as actual human beings with our own interests and passions. I think that because of this, the world and people in general are sorely lacking in passion and the motivation to chase that passion. With this in mind, I agree with Robinson that we need a more localized system(not fast food system) in which schools attempt to develop the interests of students by not pressuring them to do what they do not want to do.

          On thing that I envision when I think of class of '31 is in regards to technology. We all know how many parents just stick an iPad in their child's face to distract them. While talking to Mrs. Fletcher, she even stated her doubts in this practice in regards to putting us on chromebooks. Because of this, I feel as though this constant use of technology is inhibiting many of us from going out to explore our passions and interests. We are told that technology makes us more connected than ever, but I feel as though this mindset makes us shy away from real connections that can help develop us as people. I don't think that we should be forced to increase our use of technology because I think that interaction with our peers in social and educational matters is also a valuable thing that technology distracts us from. I disagree that we have to continue increasing our use of technology. We only have to learn to balance it with our real world connections.

-Isaiah Yoder