Race To Nowhere: The Failure Of Education

In today’s competitive, technologically-advanced business-world, one’s success is merely measured in terms of their prosperity in education. Between the pressures the education systems inflict on students to educators’ lack of diligence in teaching sufficient amounts of core material, the American school system throughout the years has failed to establish their priorities. This, in effect, has deteriorated the overall global standpoint of the nation, leading to a substantial decline in effective teaching. From the American school board’s perspective, the contending factor in determining the effectiveness of teaching is based solely on statistics. Rather than focusing on teaching an all-inclusive and fruitful education to students, teachers …show more content…
In the educational film, Race to Nowhere, overly-pressured students express their exasperation with the school system, claiming that in-class assignments, paired with homework and extracurricular activities are gradually driving them over-the edge with stress, leading some to unimaginable extremes such as anorexia and suicide (Race). When put into theory, students on average spend approximately seven hours at school on a daily basis, not including additional hours that may be devoted to extracurricular activities. This along with a minimum of an hour of homework per class totals to more or less thirteen hours dedicated to education. In addition to being irrational, this utilizes almost all of students energy leaving them with no spare time or effort to attend to personal hygiene, which consequently weakens their fitness and well being. With a diminished strength, students, as seen in the video, begin to develop numerous health problems that prevent them from thriving, and can even ultimately lead to death which at such a young age is unacceptable. Similarly, in the article, “Shanghai Schools’ Approach Pushes Students to Top of Tests,” David Barboza claims that “schools [in Shanghai] stifle creativity, and parental pressures often deprive students of the joys of childhood.” The persistent strain introduced to students by their parents at such a young age strips them of their childhood, overwhelming them with adult-like responsibilities at an all too young age. Rather than exerting themselves and inundating their minds with stress, young children and teenagers should instead be sampling the world and encountering new experiences they will not have the opportunity to try in the future. By pervading the young minds