Why we need to seriously reconsider our school system

School has always come quite easy to me, I have never seriously needed to study and spend incredible amounts of time on my homework, nor have I ever failed a single exam. However, I realize that me doing well in school has little to nothing to do with my intelligence but is due solely to the fact that I seem to be able to remember large amounts of information within a short amount of time. All I really have is a great short-term memory. That’s all there is to it but because of the scheme in which schools operate, a simple precondition like this works vastly to my advantage.

In a way, school is like the wilderness: The better adapted survive. In a system that puts an emphasis on memorization rather than comprehension or logical reasoning, a person like me is perfectly adapted (no arrogance intended) and survives easily while others struggle to stay over water. However, I often feel I lack other, more practical, skills. The concept on which school systems are built is therefore inefficient and highly questionable as it in no way evaluates true intelligence or any real-life skills but a person’s aptitude in one particular field.

Furthermore, I consider it discriminatory that kids could excel in this system with barely an effort whereas others put time and work into their schoolwork and get almost nothing out of it, even though they might possess the same amount of actual intelligence.

This is exactly why our school systems are focusing on entirely wrong aspects of students’ intellect. Instead of having them memorize dates, we might teach students to draw logical conclusions, to apply their knowledge practically and therefore prepare them better for “real life” than pure memorization ever would.