January 5th 2012, Kanye West had a rant on Twitter. Now the majority of you are most likely thinking either who is Kanye West or thinking about what he’s done now, reflecting on the VMA’s and the George Bush doesn’t care about black people comment. 

For those of you who thought the former, Kanye West is one of the best creative minds of his generation, a sensational hip hop artist, who launched a career in making beats for people such as Alicia Keys and Jay-z, then made the transition to the mic, winning Grammys and selling millions of records ever since. 

For those of you who thought the latter, he is not an asshole as he is often portrayed in the media. As he said himself in the Runaway short film, “First rule in this world, baby: don’t pay attention to anything you see in the news”. Behind the mistakes lies a child’s imagination in a man’s body, with a brutal honesty as he never hesitates to say what is on his mind. As bad as his honesty comes across, you have to admire him for it. 

Back to his rant on Twitter, he voices numerous thoughts on potential creative ideas, and then moves to the education system. Which I have strong opinions about, thinking it is severely flawed. How are exams similar to the workplace? Where will exam conditions be reciprocated in the real world? Where will someone have to memorize a year’s worth of information to recall in a test with no notes only lasting a few hours? They won’t.

Kanye’s thoughts on the matter are: 

“Help education. School systems were designed to turn people in factory workers.”

“Schools should be designed to prep human beings for real life.” 

“Math Classes should teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, accounting and money management aaaaaand cut!!! UNLESS YOU’RE A MATH MAJOR!!!!! Kids you should be able to take majors starting in grammar school like how it is at performing arts schools”

“Instead of kicking kids out of schools for using their iPhones... why not promote it? Allow kids to use search engines to do test... like the real WORLD!!! Give kids the amount of test they would have in a year in one day but they have to get everything perfect... Some kids have better memories than others... what about emotional IQs... what about kids who do bad in school because of how bad their surroundings are?”

I believe that Mr. West is spot on. Surely having practical assessments, replicating an office environment, would be the best way to test children on how capable they are at that certain task. Some students are able to do well at exams because they don’t need to hold down a part-time job to help their families pay the rent, or don’t have a low emotional IQ so don’t leave the house as they have no friends, therefore they have the extra time to revise. Why is the education system so one dimensional and why isn’t it being amended as so many other aspects of society are?

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