Twelve Indictments of the U.S Education System (Series)
Number Ten—Magnet Schools
This article follows on from an article I published last week titled “Twelve Indictments of the U.S Education System: Number Nine — Abolition of specials,” where I discussed the ninth of twelve indictments. Here is the tenth.
As a society, we have attached a negative connotation to vocational schools. The general population has agreed that school is something we all must bear through regardless of our interest, enjoyment, or success. We see education as a means to an end. Our children spend one hundred and eighty days a year in school for an average of 6.64 hours a day. Meaning our kids spend one thousand, one hundred ninety-five point two hours a year in school. To make this time effective, we should be putting more time into making education enjoyable and interesting.
Children should want to learn. Learning can be fun if it is done right. We shouldn’t have to drag our kids to school, force them to pay attention to information that they don’t find useful to their lives, and require them to regurgitate that for a grade they will compare to their self-worth. That is a dangerous game to play.
Not everyone is the same. We have different interests. We learn things differently. Our education system should be able to reflect this.
How Magnet Schools Can Better Our Education —
In preparation for this series that I have been working on, I talked with my siblings about their education experience, trying to lay out the problems we wanted to address. As we made our list, which was depressingly easy, my sister-in-law became increasingly concerned about the type of education we received. She went to a magnet school where she graduated with 86 other people who were all in a place they wanted to be.
Magnet schools offer a different kind of education while still being a part of our current system, instead of running adjacent to it as private and charter schools do. My sister-in-law’s school focused on the arts on top of their general education, and the students there wanted to be there because they truly enjoyed what they were learning.
Magnet schools have a theme that they’ve chosen to focus on, such as Science, Math, Engineering, and Technology (STEM), performing arts, language immersion, or International Baccalaureate (IB) curricula. This focus commonly draws more students than it can currently handle. In fact, most of them can only accept 10–20% of the people who want to attend.
Since magnet schools are already ingrained in your districts, you don’t have to pay for your children to attend like charter and private schools. Because of their specialized programs, magnet schools receive additional funding, which allows them to offer the kind of supplies, programs, and staffing that I’ve previously argued our entire system should receive.
These schools take on the perspective that these kids are already good and want to make them better. They encourage them to practice, explore, and enhance their interests. Even their general education courses are more expansive and enjoyable because the students want to be there, and so do the teachers.
These schools are specialized just enough that their focus isn’t on test scores as much as it is making sure everyone is learning. Instead of trying to shove all our kids into certain boxes, they help you flourish with the thing that makes you you.
The only drawback is that most people don’t know they are out there and available to them. Anyone can apply to a magnet school.
How to better incorporate magnet schools —
If we could make magnet schools more widely known and accessible, and apply even a few of their philosophies and funding into the main schools, we could dramatically improve the quality of education our children receive.
Instead of forcing people into a place they don’t want to be, we could have them choose a magnet school that fits their interests. This would result in more overall engagement and a more diverse form of learning.
Many people don’t experience the educational value of projects, argumentative papers, discussion groups, and talking circles until they are in college. There are countless alternative ways to teach people that are being embraced by magnet schools but we aren’t recognizing them in our primary school system run by bureaucrats. We should not be looking down on these techniques because they are new or different. The world is constantly changing, and we should embrace that change.
We should be improving funding, allowing time and attention for various subjects to choose from, creating a positive work environment for the teachers, and allowing for a variety of learning opportunities.
Our students should want to learn, and it is our duty to make that a reality.
