The school system

Recently, I've come to notice something very significant about the education system. It's always been visible to me, but more so in the last few months. As a person, I am not judged upon my sense of morality, my self-esteem, my perception of the world, my mental health nor my physical health, in particular. I am judged solely on a few GRADES on a piece of paper. And these grades are a product of a few exams or pieces of coursework which mainly test my ability to regurgitate information back into my 'own words'. For example, yesterday I got handed back my Theology mock exam. My teacher was satisfied that I 'thoroughly knew the syllabus' but criticised a certain paragraph I wrote which had 'too much originality' and 'wasn't on the specification'. Now, what I'd essentially done is THOUGHT about the question, explored it, and come up with a point which was different to what we'd done in class. It just displays that individuality is suppressed whilst conformity is encouraged. Shouldn't it be the other way round?

Furthermore, our grades do not define us as individuals. We only have to observe a few examples to see this is the case. The obvious one is of course, Lord Alan Sugar; he left school without a single GCSE- now he has an entire business empire and is said to be worth over £1,000,000,000. Another example (a favourite of mine) is Stanley Kubrick. He performed extremely poorly at school and left at age 15. Kubrick has an IQ of over 200, one of the highest recorded. His films are intelligent, sophisticated and hold deep subliminal meanings. He is an all round genius, in my 'humble opinion'.

I'm not trying to say everybody who fails school is an absolute genius because, arguably, there are a lot of less intellectually capable people in this world. But what I am saying is that the school and grading system does not truly measure ability. It's a mere generalisation of the idea of intelligence. Whilst revising, I revise information which I have been given, and I revise through 'memory techniques' as opposed to broadening a spectrum of various ideas. It seems that I am not being encouraged to 'think' which seems particularly fitting with the principles of our government and society.