Essay/Term paper: Schools should prepare children for life in society

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Education

Schools Should Prepare Children For Life in Society

In today's information society people often think that characters from TV-shows
or talkshow guests reflect our society. Although that opinion is rather based on
the disability of people to use information than on any logical thoughts, there
is something every talkshow reminds us of: people are not perfect. So, I say,
society can not be perfect either. I believe that society works by that society
doesn't work. People are too different to put them all into one melting pot, but
you have to, because otherwise society would end in destruction and hate (as
seen in the Third Reich).

I believe that schools have an obligation to prepare children for life in
society. Therefore they don't necessarily have the ability to change society but
I think today's situation in Germany is not nearly as bad as the situation in
"Dead poet's society", a movie based on a true story. In the movie a teacher
tries to let his students be creative and critical towards everything they see
and hear while neglecting values like punctuality and obedience. At first he is
successful, but as soon as the school board notices his ambitions, he gets
suspended for some odd reason.

If a teacher in Germany tries to influence students in the way that they are
more creative that is generally seen as positive, but what almost makes this
impossible is the number of students in a class and the time frame of just 45
minutes, which is short if you are going to hear all the different opinions of
all the students.

If we accept that there do exist problems in society that need to get fixed, we
also have to see that it is not school's job to do this alone.

Schools just cannot make decisions for society, but they should work on
"producing" individual, critical and creative thinkers with a strong social
conscience. However other institutions need to support schools in doing that and
I think it should specifically be pointed out that the current decrease of
teachers while numbers of students are increasing, can have fatal consequences
for the next generations of citizens.