To Be Kind
In preschool, and throughout elementary school, I had always been taught that “if [I] didn’t have anything nice to say, then [not to] say anything at all.” This phrase is something that I, and all of my peers, have heard essentially my entire life. Preschool and kindergarten are the grades in which students learn basic manners and skills that they will use as they grow older and become an adult. Teachers believe that they are teaching their students to be nice, however, I see it more as being taught to be tolerant of others.
The concept of being nice to people, even if someone does not particularly like them or isn’t fond of them, has been drilled into my head for the longest time. Teachers today even bring up that I should be nice to those I don’t like as if it is a childish concept. I have learned that being nice to other people is what I should do because it is what is
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In Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1848 by Horace Mann, he talks about how the education system that is in place is corrupt in that it is more about teaching students facts and how to pass a class rather than truly learning something that could be used later in their lives. Mann says, “however elevated the moral character of a constituency may be, however well informed in matters of general science or history, yet they must, if citizens of a republic, understand something of the true nature and functions of the government in which they live” (Mann, p. 147). This quote proves that today, people never really learn anything on their own because they are always taught. Many schools, including my own, only teach their students to do worksheets, not to learn and remember the material. Students are given worksheets to memorize for the upcoming test but after that, the material they were supposed to learn is