Making America Proud?

After reading "America At Risk" and the whole Sputnik buzz, the one question going through my mind was why would literacy ever be considered a trait of patriotism? What ever happened to contributing and loving your country? The whole pressure of becoming literate to make your country proud, let alone making your parents proud, just astonished me. Yes, literacy can be helpful for one's success, but as a form of serving your country? Leave politics with politics and leave education for educators to worry about.

Literacy can help a person make the better of him or herself and for a brighter future. But, to me, kids don't really understand that concept. They are told to learn to read and write because they need to, not why they should. Some compromise and do as they are told like I was for being required to write in cursive writing. In elementary school and middle school, my fellow classmates and I were told that there will be no other form of writing other than cursive in the future once we go off to high school and college. Let's just say my teachers were wrong. Instead of continuing to write in cursive, I incorporated my own style of writing which puts cursive and print writing together. I believe learning in general can be like that. If I don't understand the lesson my professor is giving me, I take the main point of the lecture and create my own lesson out of it to help me understand it better. Students need to find their own unique way of learning instead of following the formal structure and getting lost in the long run.

But more important, students need to find their motivation. I knew what I needed to do once I discovered what I wanted to do with my life. So my dream career is my motivation. People shouldn't be so consumed of what others think of them, like what American politics might think in regards to being viewed by the global eye. All in all, we should focus on our students as individuals, not as a whole nation. That's why illiteracy is such a national issue. If one student is having issues, it will only be that student. But if more than one are having issues, then it's the teaching system and if it's not alternated, the number in illiterate students would increase.