God Hates Us All

7. Extra Education

          The sun had come out to play, as if it had advance knowledge that Helen and Devon were going to take the day off. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky and they had decided to return to the park that afternoon, since window shopping got a little too boring. Devon was more of an in and out kind of shopper, where as Helen only liked to shop if she had a reasonable amount of cash on hand, or else looking around was just one big tease. They decided to get away from the shops and take a stroll around one of the downtown residential areas where a lot of tall apartment buildings and even a large school resided. As they approached the school, it was obvious that the school in question was still at lunch hour but the bell was just ringing to call them back into class. They both watched from the fences as the kids lined up and slowly filed back into the building to fill their heads with information they may or may not use in the not so far off distant future. Once the kids were all packed back into their sardine like classrooms, Helen slipped onto the playground and took to one of the swing sets and started to swing around and enjoy herself. Devon didn't feel like doing any kind of swing motion so he sat down on a bench and relaxed and looked around the playground.

          "This is a pretty fancy school." Helen said as she kept swinging.

          "Looks nice, but I likely won't be sending any kids here anytime soon. This place probably costs an arm and a leg to send just one kid to." Devon replied.

          "Would you send them here if you could afford it?"

          "I'm not sure, it depends on the kid. Some of them might thrive in a setting like this, some might find it suffocating. I don't know if I would have done that well here, I seemed to do all right where I was raised. I was a product of a public school, and I turned out all right."

          "Not everyone does."

          "Not everyone tries."

          "So you're saying the student is responsible for their own grades, that no one else is to blame for their failure? Not the teacher, parent or the schools?"

          "Everyone has a job and a responsibility to live up to, I understand, but none of it will make a lick of difference if the kid doesn't want to try." Devon sat up and he could sense another great debate flowing up, "It's like sending someone off to therapy. Unless they want to be treated, no treatment will ever work without the co-operation of the subject. They have to want the help in order for it to be successful. Education is very similar. Unless the student wants to be educated, there is little else anyone can do. You can try to convince them, but you can't force them."

          "So is this the reason our education system is one of the worst when it comes to modern, industrialized nations?"

          "Not really, there's a whole whack of reasons why we fall behind. Some of it has to do with a lack of effort on our part, while some of it even has to do with a lot of effort on everyone else's part."

          Helen had stopped swinging at this point and was just sitting and listening. "I don't understand."

          "Well, when I first graduated from university..."

          "Wait a second, you have a university degree?"

          "Yes, but we can get back to that later."

          "Wow, I didn't realize you were that educated."

          "Well, I am. One of the first things I did right after I got my degree was travel. I took a job overseas to teach English. Seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do. Make some money, get some interesting job experience and see the world."