1: The School System in America intentionally restricts students’ creativity and occupational motivation in order to maintain a supply of desperate and exploitable young adults.

1a: The School System focuses too hard on basic curriculum while ignoring development of social skills that are more important, leaving students unready for the adult world.

2: Five Academic Sources

1. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/prin/csj/2017/00000050/00000003/art00014

I find it counterintuitive that something perceived as so valuable actually holds little importance. When both fortune 500 and non fortune 500 recruiters sought after kids, GPA and actual academic ability did not hold as much weight. What did hold more weight is “soft skills”, which is a general term for skills developed around social and teambuilding skills. Studies show that these skills are what recruiters prefer over GPA, meaning that the preconception that better schools will automatically make you more qualified than others is false

2. https://phys.org/news/2018-03-children-benefit-taught-social-emotional.html?utm_source=TrendMD&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Phys.org_TrendMD_1

I find it counterintuitive that different programs that taught different social and emotional skills produced better performance in regular classes. Throughout the country, kids were given more teaching centered around emotions. The programs showed that at the bottom line, all of them work. However, it also showed that the environment may influence what program works the best.

3. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220973.2021.1873090?cookieSet=1

During this study, kids were measured on how soft skills developed in school due to how many extracurricular activities they performed. Students were recorded for several soft skills, and how many activities they performed. Students that were more into extracurricular activities had more self-regulation and motivation, which in turn, increased academic performance. It actually showed that these factors held more weight than pure cognitive skills.

4. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED561797

This article goes in depth about how it is potentially harmful to retain students back a grade for not being academically adequate. It goes in depth with other students and researchers were able to find a problem with the school system itself. A students chances of failing or passing is factored upon many different things, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status etc. However, the research also pointed out that the system itself is flawed and needs a change. The rapid push towards standardization is harmful towards students.

5. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED513338.pdf

This article shows how standardized testing is both detrimental to the students and a bad incentive for the teachers. The school curriculum has turned into essentially preparing the class for the “next big test” which gets rid of a lot of the purpose of the education in the first place. The incentive for the teachers is to have their students perform better than students of others classes. This standardization is what limits kids’ learning if more important skills, such as soft skills. With this method of teaching for the test, teachers usually gloss over the actual points of these lessons, replacing them just with the answers of the lessons. This leads students to not knowing quite what they are learning, setting them up to be confused and left behind in future years, without any skills or any real knowledge to bring with them towards the higher grade.

3: Topics for smaller arguments

I am definitely confident on writing on the importance of soft skills within the job market. I would be able to write a lot on how soft skills become more important for higher up jobs as opposed to hard skills.

I can also write about the current school system and how its method of teaching is for their benefit and not for the benefit of the students of teachers. Standardization of tests and exams encourages teachers to not teach correctly which ends up leaving the students without any real skills .

4: Current State of My Research:

I am finding many articles and sources that leads to the conclusion that the school system is not designed to help students reach their full potential, however I am finding trouble finding articles showing that it is intentional. While my hypothesis is bold, I have yet to find a juicy article to help it hold value. I might have to go for the slightly less counterintuitive argument that schools simply are not designed to help students reach higher educational goals or career paths.