Education in America
Education is America has been an extremely controversial subject in society for a number of decades. Topics under constant scrutiny from society range in funding to “important” core curriculum in which our students should be taught. Throughout history, educators have wondered why education gets little recognition and popularity; when it all reality, it is probably the most important factor surrounding our youth today. Why is this many of us wonder? We need to look at things like the amount of funding received to teach our kids, what we should be teaching them, and the important pieces that will get our children ready for what we like to label as “the real world”. Being a prospective teacher for a number of years I have had the opportunity to take a look into this topic in depth as to why children are not up to par with the rest of the world. The question we must raise is how do we quickly improved these flaws with our government and school districts and put our students first, not our checkbooks.
Many parents today are faced with the tough decision on whether to enroll their child into public schools, charter schools, and even homeschooling in some instances. Watching the video Back in Black: An education crisis, Mr. Black comically portrays to us how far behind we are compared to other countries in the rest of the world in important core subjects like math and science. Personally, I think we do not view our education as a priority like many countries across the globe do. Not only are our students seeing this, but our teachers are also affected greatly by this as well. For example, we can look at the teacher’s strike that has been recently revolved in Chicago. Teachers expect a larger income for the job that they are doing that our government consistently gives them little to no credit for doing. One of the most important jobs in society today is a teacher, in my opinion. Whether it is a teacher at a public or charter school, they are feeling the burden placed on their shoulders as one that should be looked at in a more positive manner. I found it very interesting in Mr. Black’s video that the students selected for these “up-tempo” charter schools are selected at random through a lottery process. I think this choice should be given to the students and their knowledge and willingness to learn. Government has provided school districts with the funding necessary to excel and build around the common good of their students; it’s just how these districts disburse their money, and many of them are taking the wrong steps in doing this. Another real world example we can take a look at on this topic is the recent construction and renovation that has occurred in Allen, Texas. Allen High School recently just constructed a 6 million dollar football stadium for their football team. Many questions have been raised as to why they chose to use this huge chunk of money solely on athletics. With the current teacher strikes across the nation, in my opinion, this money should have been used to restructure and improve academics, not athletics. It is up to society as a whole to give schools like Allen High School are full attention and input on to how this money should be fairly distributed.
Education in America is such a controversial topic that we could sit here and talk for hours on how to improve it. Test scores have been on a steady decline, teachers jobs have been at a constant risk, and the student’s well-being has not been the priority that I feel it needs to be at. Learning and willing to learn, whether in public or charter schools, should be a higher priority than we are currently seeing it be. Funding should be approved and supported in a fashionable manner, and students should be one of its main priorities. In order to succeed, students need should be given an equal opportunity to learn, and with how society has portrayed academics today I feel this is not the case. The importance of a proper and adequate education should be the focus of school districts today; and sadly to say I feel that it’s not as high on their list as it should be. Saying this, we must properly take steps discussed previously to make sure that our students are all received an equal opportunity to learn and succeed.
