Lowered Expectations

The American educational system is in crisis. Students today are pushed through middle and high schools without receiving a proper education or anything resembling a comprehensive knowledge of the world. I meet many people who have completed high school, who in my honest opinion, haven’t even grasped middle school concepts. Many people today have little understanding of the history of human events, social issues, and have a ridiculously limited vocabulary. I read a survey recently that concluded that more people could name the Three Stooges than the three branches of government; that is unacceptable. Students today enter into the workforce or college unequipped for the tasks ahead. Students today are given only a basic understanding of politics and history, which I think leads to a low voter turnout and a misunderstanding of current political and social issues. I personally feel that I now have an adequate understanding of politics and history, but nearly all of my education in these areas I have acquired on my own through reading and other research. In the last few years some states have instituted high school exit exams; some claim that they are too difficult, but I say we should raise the bar even higher for students wishing to be given a high school diploma. My class year in high school was the first to take the high school exit exam, and my class was given a chance to pass it my freshman year. I can remember thinking that there would be no way possible that I would pass a test meant for outgoing seniors my freshman year; I was wrong. I was shocked to find how simple and easy the test was; I passed it with ease my first try. The test had no social science questions, and the math and language sections looked like they were meant for someone with only a basic middle school education. My senior year of high school I saw that many people I knew were still having problems passing the test, which was unbelievable to me. I saw more and more critics of the tests saying that the tests were prohibiting people from graduating; my response was “good”; if people could not pass a test as simple as this one they have no business being given a high school diploma. A high school diploma should mean that you have at least a basic understanding of math, language, English, social sciences and have some grasp of analytical reasoning; I doubt most high school seniors even know what analytical reasoning means. We move high school students along far too quickly in this country without giving them the proper tools to improve themselves. The American educational system needs to raise the level of expectations on which topics high school students can grasp. The problem today isn’t that students can’t read or write, it’s that they can’t think, or more specifically they don’t know how to think. Students today are taught more how to memorize then how to critically analyze problems and develop solutions to those problems. Subject matter such as physiology, philosophy, and sociology are nowhere to be found in schools today; why? I think many teachers and administrators believe the subjects to be too hard to understand for high school students, but if that is true then they need to work to make it so these subjects are easy to understand for students. It is unconceivable to me why knowing the Pythagorean theorem is more important than a basic knowledge of the human psyche or society. Most high school students are forced to take at least three years of mathematics in which they learn advanced subjects such a trigonometry and calculus that they will most likely never need in later life, but only one year of U.S. history is required to graduate. I don’t understand why subjects such as mathematics are elevated above, in my eyes, far more important and useful subjects. This neglect of important subject leaves high school graduates with little knowledge of the history of this country and others, and without an understanding of where we have been it is difficult to understand where we need to go as a nation. Another key subject that is neglected in our schools is teaching students about finances. Teaching what a credit score is, how credit cards work, the principles of investment, and retirement savings are missing in a lot of our schools. Many young people don’t understand how credit cards work and get themselves into debt early, which hurts in later life. This is especially true in poorer neighborhoods where the parents themselves might not have understanding of these topics. Students need to also to be taught how to file taxes and fill out job applications. It would help students greatly if they were taught the proper way to conduct during a job interview. Another area I see where the expectation has been lowered in schools is with the teachers themselves. Throughout my middle and high school experiences, I found myself many times more knowledgeable in the subjects that some of the teachers were trying to teach than they were. I don’t understand how we expect students to be taught when the teachers themselves need more schooling. I understand that it is hard to get extremely intelligent people to teach at a public high school when they can’t teach at a university and make far more money, but we need to make sure that the teachers we have are proficient in the subjects they are teaching. A big problem I see is the teacher’s unions that make it next to impossible to fire incompetent teachers. I can remember parents at my old high school being fed up with incompetent teachers and going to the administration about it only to be told that there was nothing the school could do to remove mean and unproductive teachers; that is unacceptable. There needs to be an annual efficiency test and performance review for all teachers and if they repeatedly fail these tests, they need to be removed from the classroom, and have someone who is competent put in their place. Many of the teachers in our public school system are disgruntled and can be down right mean to there students. I have seen the difference that a teacher can make on a student’s outlook towards a certain subject or school in general. We need a system of identifying those teachers who are detrimental to a student’s education and bring in teachers who are qualified and have an enthusiasm about educating young people. Fixing the problems in schools is an extremely important task for our society. The expectations that we have for students and teachers need to increase dramatically to improve our school system. I believe more stringent testing in our schools is in order to ensure that students graduating high school are efficient in general concepts. We need to focus more on the subjects that will really help students, not only in college, but also in their daily lives. A key part of improving the education of students is simply improving the quality of the teaching that provides that education. The biggest step needed to improve our school system is for politicians to stop catering to the powerful teacher’s unions and return the power into the hands of parents. Parents should be making more decisions for their child than the bureaucrats at the Department of Education. Simply throwing more and more money at the problem, like so many politicians do, isn’t going to fix the problem. Parents, teachers and local school boards need to look abstractly at the problems that face our school system today. Young men and women, while only a small part of the entire population, are 100% of our future; therefore, it is imperative that we contemplate all possible solutions to the problem of our educational system