Education

What has become of us? What are we turning into?

We have let our arrogance and our ignorance overcome us completely. We live in a world where the pride of our parents has become more important than their child’s true potential. We live in a world where students honestly believe that a letter is more important than their honesty and hard work. Students would rather tell their parents, “Well it’s not my fault! She doesn’t teach us anything!” Rather than be honest, admit their wrongs, and ask for hard work. It’s pathetic, but can you blame them? Students listen to their parents, who would rather brag about a near perfect grade point average rather than their child’s honest work ethic. It’s this blinding ignorance that has disabled us from understanding what it actually means to learn.

Thankfully, on the other side of the world there is another world that shows us exactly what it means to have the amazing opportunity of education. That other world is called Abdasalam Saya.

Our first day at Abdasalam Saya we met Touria, the education director. “Abdasalam Saya” literally translates to “slave of peace.” Which in my mind is the best way to describe Touria. Touria emphasized how truly hard working and grateful students are at Abdasalam Saya. This was displayed to the “T” during our first day in the classroom. We have been teaching for two days now and in every class, during every hour, and every minute, students treated every word as if it could be their last, hanging on to every last syllable. They seize every education opportunity that is presented before them. They show up to school every day with an ambition to learn like their lives depend on it. Because they do.

Mariam is one of the brightest, hardest working students in my class. She is soft-spoken, diligent, accountable, and at appropriate times she can even be funny. Yesterday we had the opportunity to sit down with Mariam and her humble family inside their home. While there, Mariam’s guardian and older sister admitted that Mariam will sometimes come home from school crying. Crying because she has not understood the lesson that was taught to her class that day. Her sister continued to say that “Every time she cries I have to remind her that ‘we pray for those who teach and for those who want to learn.’” She continued explaining that education is not about being the smartest in your class. She justified it saying, “If education was about the smartest people then we would only have good doctors and engineers, that’s it.” To be a doctor or is an engineer is an amazing thing. But if we want to live in a perfect world we must have great carpenters, great shoe makers, even great factory workers. She continued saying “It doesn’t matter what you do, if you educate yourself you will be great and you will be helping to change the world into a better place.”

Education is not about talent, it is about passion. From carpentry to law school it doesn’t matter what your profession is, what matter is your willingness to learn and achieve success.

What is happening to the American education system is truly unfortunate. Some might even say, “Well, that’s life.” But, in the words of one of our translators Wassyan, “You can’t say ‘that’s life’ because that’s only the life you know. Unless you go and experience another way of life you will live your entire life thinking that there is no way to fix some of the life’s greatest problems.” It is our job to experience all ways of life and apply what we learn to our lives.

We, as a community, as a state, as a country must swallow our pride and take responsibility for our wrong doings that are negatively affecting our education system. We must stop blaming our teachers, our principals, and our education system. We must stop telling students they won’t achieve success if they don’t get a good grade in algebra. We must instead, “pray for those who teach and those who want to learn.” Because those are the people that will change the world.