Public School Systems Do Not Support A Passion For Knowledge
by Nicholas Lanz, Pacific Sands Academy student
The methods used by the public school system do not support a passion for knowledge, as the education is usually very shallow and leaves many unanswered questions on many topics. As public education has grown into a glorified day-care rather than a center of learning, these unanswered questions have grown in number, leaving those interested dissatisfied.
I was one of those dissatisfied students. It seemed as though every topic discussed in school was never fully, or even partially discussed. The curriculum was designed to offer the most basic information about a topic, subject, or concept, without ever provoking thinking or new questions. This was most obvious in my second year of public high school, in which I was enrolled in a class on European history, a subject very interesting to me on a personal level, and one I have studied a great deal. Simply put, the class was underwhelming to the point of anger, the teacher and curriculum were more basic and unstimulating than I could have possibly imagined. Topics were never explained or discussed in the detail they deserve, especially for an AP class. Needless to say, I was disappointed, and quickly realized that all classes were like this, and in fact all of public school was like this.
I did not want to participate any more in such an insulting institution, and so I sought my emancipation from the public school, and lucky for me I had a friend who had done the same thing not even a year prior. This friend of mine offered a solution to my problem with his explanation of self-guided learning and the Pacific Sands Academy. He told me about how the program was structured to promote interest in education, as well as a free and relaxed environment.
It certainly seemed to be the perfect answer to the question of school, and so I took the steps to enroll in the program. Education was, and is, the most important thing to me, and certainly the most important thing to the concept of schooling, however, public school does not seem to understand this, and focuses much more on control and discipline than learning.
I, like many others, was to understand that this is how school is, and that the only way to learn is in such an environment, but ever since I have spent time in the Pacific Sands Academy program, I realized how false this is. Over the past few weeks of my participation in the program I feel as though the fog of compulsory public ‘school’ has been lifted and the bright sun of learning, and interest in learning, has re-emerged from a long hibernation.
The standard school system seems almost laughable now from my new perspective, and it is a thing to laugh at for sure. Naturally there is a bit of hesitancy and anxiety when leaving such an accustomed institution for a seemingly less developed one, and I felt this when I was leaving public school, yet almost instantly you find the collection of benefits from a school designed around education, the most important resource.
Pacific Sands Academy is much closer to the image of the ideal school, one dedicated to the expansion of knowledge and the development of learning than the public school system, and I am glad that I took the steps to move on to a better program, where education is the primary objective.
