Filed under “What Is Happening to Our Educational System?” is this course description found in the fall semester catalog of Northern Virginia Community College. Really? Isn’t America dumbed down enough that a course on wedding planning needs to be taught?

Whatever happened to independent RESEARCH? The Internet has made it easier than ever before to locate information on any topic one might desire. As a matter of fact, it is almost too easy to find too much information, given the links within a webpage that transport the user instantaneously to a completely different website. Is the problem that people in general, and students in particular, do not know how to look for information? Or is the problem that people are losing the ability to think for themselves?

There was a time not so long ago that dictionaries and thesauruses were standard school supplies. If a student did not know how to correctly spell a word, basic skills like sounding the word out and alphabetizing helped that student eventually locate the word in a dictionary. A thesaurus came in handy when a student needed to learn how to paraphrase resources. Not anymore. Nowadays, a feature in most wordprocessors called autocorrect makes those ‘searching skills’ (research) obsolete, never mind the fact that many times, autocorrect changes the intended message completely, so much so that websites such as www.DamnYouAutocorrect have sprung up.

Is America so caught up with standardized testing that independent research has fallen by the wayside? Are today’s students on a “need to know basis,” and therefore learning only those things that are later quizzed, albeit so easily forgotten? Learning is SO much more than memorizing facts and certain steps. How can creativity–and this is where research skills lie–develop in a uni-dimentional world?

One day, when my daughter was fifteen years old, she announced that she was tired of high school and wanted to get her GED (General Equivalency Diploma) so that she “could get on with her life” and start college. At first, I didn’t know what to say; after all, when I was fifteen, the only girls who got their GED’s were pregnant. However, Kate had yet to have her first date. Sensing my hesitancy, she countered with, “Just go to Barnes and Noble, Mama. You’ll find a Dummies book on it there.” I was at Barnes and Noble that afternoon.

I learned that four out of the five subjects, Writing, Reading, Social Studies, and Science, were tested subjectively; that is, in essay form. Mathematics was the sole subject that was tested objectively; the answers A, B, C, or D were circled. I thought this was fabulous! My daughter would have to think, and then organize her ideas, and finally write a logical paragraph or essay.

We were living in Washington, D.C. in 1997 and, back then, its Board of Education wanted its GED candidates to be at least seventeen years old. I could have interceded for Kate and pleaded her case, but I felt that part of my children’s education was for them to learn how to fight their own battles, and so Kate was the one who went in the front of the school board and articulated all the reasons she should be able to take the test at age fifteen. Granted, she was nervous and scared to death, but like David and Goliath, she prepared herself well for the battle and ultimately won.

Today Kate is a mother of two young children and homeschools them the way she was homeschooled–by “unschooling.” Children are naturally inquisitive, and this method allows them the freedom to self-direct their own education. I imagine readers who are unfamiliar with unschooling are thinking that learning cannot possibly take place in such an unstructured environment. I feel that I only need say that my daughter graduated from a community college at the age of eighteen and then applied to an Ivy league school back when homeschoolers were first being considered. Her acceptance hinged on, what else? An essay. She later graduated from Cornell University.

But, back to the course on wedding planning that got me riled up in the first place… Don’t waste your hard-earned money on something that can be easily learned with a few keystrokes. In your computer’s browser type in the words “how to plan a wedding,” and be amazed at the plethora of links to guides, checklists and ideas that will be presented. Else you take the risk of having a cookie-cutter event that more-than-just-a-little resembles the wedding of every one of your classmates. And who would want their wedding to be like that?