American education has become institutionalized to value credentials and scores on abstract tests unrelated to life activities that students and their families pursue meaningless goals instead of improving their lives.

As a professor, I see college students packing their transcripts and resumes with tons of majors, extracurricular activities, sports, and other things without doing the work behind them that makes them valuable. They look great on paper, but are more busy than accomplished. It’s sad, but they are just doing what the system rewards.

Most adults suffer from the same distortion of values.

Ironically, a student broke from the usual system to create this simple, effective video illustrating the situation from a high school student’s perspective. The video has no special effects or magic. Anyone could have made it. She did. Here’s the link to her blog.

This is why I won’t teach lecture-based classes, in favor of student-driven inquiry-driven project-based learning.

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