We are taught Mathematics, Sciences, English, History, and even foreign languages. Unfortunately, we are also taught how to think. Schools manifest pride in brainwashing students to exemplify thinking in the same, unoriginal “cookie-cutter” fashion. Additionally, schools censor and channel their students thinking to conditionally produce “A” material. I am not claiming this tragedy to be entirely intentional, it just happens to be a consequence that trails the public school system.

Academic results have proven more disappointing results in the United States since the Bush Administration. Who or what is to blame? Obviously it is the kids these days with their YouTube’s, wacky music, and palpable apathy. No. Ironically, and just recently, school systems themselves are becoming the star character in the terrible education scene. The No Child Left Behind Act is a paramount example of the government advocating mediocrity. The idea of this is to keep every student on the same page and to not accept failure. How do you eliminate failure? Lower the standards of academic achievement, course. However, establishing lower goals and expectations for students presents no incentive to achieve and go above and beyond. This misfortune teaches the top-of-the-class students to receive and maintain their “A’s” while demonstrating half the effort, which is not a brilliant concept for the future leaders of this world. Even the underpaid teachers are beginning to care less and less about what their profession stands for, and more about the amount of paperwork to be graded.

Stricken with specific guidelines and boundaries, schools are depriving the opportunity of exceptional brilliance and creativity from the students. The curricula most public schools utilize are synonymous to handing someone a half-completed coloring book—stay inside the lines, color the grass green and the sky blue. In the end, everyone’s coloring books will look the exact same. Just as these students thinking—the exact same. Educational erosion is progressively becoming more amply demonstrated in public schools, and will quickly take its affect quicker than the students can, or cannot, spell failure.