America’s blueprint for our education system dates back to the Enlightenment period. While many changes have been made over the past centuries, the format and basics have continued to be the same. The only thing a batch of students have in common is their age. Throughout their educational years, up to high school, they are taught basic mathematics, sciences, history, and literary arts. It is not until after 14 years of education that they finally get to narrow their fields and study their interests, also known as college. It is time the educational system reached an enlightenment period of its own.

 Making a national change to this learning system would mean facing multiple obstacles, but I propose the change begins in middle school. Preschool up to the fifth grade teach us valuable, everyday basic thinking, touching on our analytical, practical, and creative intelligences. Slowly, without most student’s recognition, we take away both practical and creative fields, but more importantly, move away from divergent thinking. Middle and high school are, therefore, shrinking our potential capacity of intelligences and only focusing on the one, analytic.

 Divergent thinking, according to Merriam Webster, is creative thinking that may follow many lines of thought and tends to generate new and original solutions to problems. Divergent thinking is used to find many solutions to one problem. According to today’s education system, however, there is always one answer. In math class, for example, we are taught there is only one way and one way only to find x. Math is comprised of problem solving and should be taught through divergent thinking. This would be the basis of teaching beyond fifth grade.

 After we finish up our schooling up to fifth grade, we would take a basic test to measure our intelligence, a modified SAT or ACT. This test would measure our practical, creative, and analytic fields, not just grammar, writing, and reading abilities. This test, in essence, would serve not to see if you are “intelligent,” but what field of intelligence you strive in. The results of one’s test would then be used to dictate what batch of kids he or she belongs in.

 Starting in middle school, age would not be what would define a group, but their ability. What would also separate them is what time of the day they begin school. Some students excel at earlier hours than others and vise versa. This would enhance each person’s learning ability and make it a bearable, mandatory system, unlike the one we have now. Instead of having few practical and creative classes, also known as electives, your schedule would vary depending on your field. It is important to improve in the fields you struggle in and continue to learn in the fields you excel in. Because of this, there would be an even split between these so called “important” academic classes and the elective classes.

 Changing our education system seems too intangible to even fathom, but I believe a change is what this country needs. I do not have a solution, but I do have possible ideas. With these changes to how we are taught, also during one of the most stimulating decades of mankind, students may not find school a “waste of time,” and an opportunity to expand in the fields they enjoy. The way I see it, why should I have to wait until college to learn what I enjoy?