Tuesday 4 August 2015

'Education is the passport to your future' - really?!

Okay so as a Sixth Form student, exam season has just passed. Therefore my Sixth Form has stuck posters up around, supposedly encouraging students to work hard, revise and get good grades.

Now I might've simply read a bit too deeply into the meaning of that statement plastered on the bottom of the poster but I don't really think that it's portraying the most positive message to students who are already on the brink of a mental breakdown from the levels of stress and pressure which they're having to cope with. To me it just looks like a form propaganda to boost the statistics, but that might be a little far fetched...
By using this slogan, it is suggesting that without an education, you will not 'gain access' to your future as such.
If you don't pass these exams then you're a failure, basically. You've technically lost your 'passport to your future'.
I know for a fact, that education is not the only way to having a successful life. Okay so that's a bit of a vague statement as everybody considers success as something different. For example, for me success is when I'm very happy. Of course this can be achieved by getting good grades, or earning lots of money from my job but in all honesty, being surrounded by people who love you can also bring happiness personally. Maybe even loosing weight would make you feel very happy.
Therefore education is not necessarily needed for your future!
I don't know, I guess it just depends what you're striving for in the future but I think that posters like this are simply trying to force you into being something you may not really want to be and adding more unnecessary pressure to your life, which definitely isn't going to make you any happier.
What's the point in living if you're not happy?!
Of course everyone goes through periods of anxiety and anger in their lives but not getting an A* in that exam shouldn't limit your whole future.

Since writing this post, I've found an article on the BBC news website all about banning erasers in schools. Click here to view the original article. It talks about how there have been suggestions that rubbers should be banned in schools because they allow children to remove their mistakes from their work. I quote 'Claxton's argument is that by making children deny they make mistakes, we fail to prepare them for the real world, where mistakes can be made, and consequences ensue.'

So this makes sense, by allowing children to remove mistakes they're not being prepared for the real world, yeah fair enough.


However isn't this extremely contradicting to the whole system of exams and the idea that 'education is the passport to your future'?!? I say this because the original statement implies that if you fail and do not get an education then you've lost your future. So when you're in an exam, you're not allowed to make mistakes because if you do and you fail, BOOM game over.

Okay so I'm not sure if that made too much sense, but hey ho. Rant over.
Thank you for reading, what do you think? Have I read far too deeply into this poster?
Opinions are appreciated:)

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