Lifestyle and Education... Is it Really Our Choice

Last week in class, someone mentioned that if someone wants to learn a skill or a particular career path, then a schools and other learning institutions should offer these courses. But instead, schools force students to take classes that are mostly irrelevant towards skills necessary in the workforce. Such institutions require state mandated exams that test where you fit in a particular percentile among your peers and majority of the year that you would spend in these classrooms are teaching you how to pass these state exams. Although the education system is there to help you gain a particular set of tools to help with a future career path, not all individuals manage to attain such tools and fall in between the cracks of the educational system. Another example of how the educational system is failing the people is the difference in education between people of high socioeconomic status and people of low socioeconomic status. People who live in suburbs profit from better education rather than people who live in urban areas and are hit by poverty. This lifestyle is not something that people choose to become, they do what they can with what they have.

As a result of the difference between socioeconomic status people who live in urban areas are more likely to work dead-end jobs and struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck. Their children also suffer the consequences of this in which after they finish high school or choose to drop out they are forced into working and to help provide the family with income, therefore unable to attend further education and stay at the poverty line. Another reason is the cost of education is too much for people to afford and are unable to get their career paths started. People who of low socioeconomic status are very ambitious and have goals that they want to achieve but the fact that their environment is not helping them as much as they should, they put their own needs aside to set up goals for the next generation. Their lifestyle and their education is not their own choice but the decisions are based on people with high socioeconomic status and high in political standing that continue to make it difficult for these people.