Play-Doh: Children In The 20th Century

Our education system does seem to be in trouble for the way that it is headed, but also a lack of motivation from the children seems to aid in the problems. It is said that America keeps up well with other leading nations in the early years of education, but as soon as kids start to grow older getting good grades just for that special trip to get ice cream doesn’t seem to be enough anymore and as the high grades begin to “weaken as students move through school.” (Bethell).

Many high schools are spent huge amount of time and resources to prepare high school students to test or even being responsible citizen. Diane Ravitch in her essay “The essentials of a good education” tells about it, “More time was allotted to take practice tests in mathematics and reading. Because there are only so many hours in a day, there was less time for subject that were not tested” (page 106). She believes that if student spent whole day to prepare to test and get “A”, such school is a not really good school, even if gets high scores and the state awards it an “A”. Also many educated parent are would not tolerate a school that cut back or eliminate the arts to spent more time preparing for state test. If student will study well on each subject, for example good enough on math, writing and reading so he/she will not need extra class to prepare for test and spent his/he time and money. So Diane Ravitch believes that, our education system is in wrong way because they spent much time to preparing test. On the other hand, John Taylor Gatto in his essay “Against school” represent that, the problem of US education is not to give a knowledge, but conversely to make good citizens or workforce. He tells in his essay that US education system become like Prussian system, “Our educational system really is Prussian in origin, and that really is cause for concern. One of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens - all in order to render the populace "manageable."(117). In his opinion the education system problem was that they make people become predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor

America’s education system is a disaster and the government has over the years spent millions on fixing the education system. The government has failed in fixing the education system because they are not the real people who can fix it. The government has made many different programs to fix the education system, like the No Child left behind program. Most people blame the government for spending millions to fix the education system and failing. What our society does not understand is that the government can only fix so much. It is time for all students, parents, and teachers to take responsibly and fix the education system in the way they want. Students, parents and teachers can make the education system better by students taking control of their own education, parents who care for their kid’s education and teachers who make amazing learning environment for their students.

Education in America has drastically decreased in efficiency in the last fifty years. Schools in America do not care about their students, or their education; they care about the test scores achieved by their students. The American education system is severely flawed in many ways. These flaws are more dire than they are made out to be, since they incapacitate the ability of their students to learn the material taught. This occurs because it is more important to pass a class than to retain the information they obtain.

The American educational system has proven to be insufficient in training our children to be well rounded citizens. With so much emphasis placed upon standardized testing, there is little room for personal growth and individuality; instead, our current classroom design forces kids to remain in a box rather than teaching them how to work with their strengths and weaknesses as individuals. With so much emphasis placed upon memorization and drilling, important aspects of childhood development, such as critical thought and the cultivation of creativity, have been abandoned. Rather than instilling a sense of accomplishment and motivation in our students, the educational system has become a force of fear as futures are determined by a test score.

School Standards and Testing Everyday, schools all over America are pushing students to the brink of insanity. They are giving many quizzes and tests, along with anxiety and sleep deprivation. Teachers have very high expectations, leaving students to worry about keeping their grades up. Meanwhile, students have to juggle with five to seven different classes, learning new material for each class, keeping up with sports and other after-school activities, studying each night for tests, etc.

Education is the essential foundation for the progressing of our nation as well as the stimulation for our children. Now, as some may or may-not know that learning gives forth children the accessibility to succeed in physical, intellectual, and even emotional endeavors. Education tends to incline us to widen the door towards attainment in the future. As individuals receive an education, they are more capable to obtain better employment. Views tend to be various to our educational system. Throughout America’s history, students, parents, educators, and government authority have discussed what changes must be made in America’s public school system. We agree changes need to be made to reach goals that will prepare our future for the future properly. However, the voices and cries for positive changes have yet to be heard. Sometimes, many of those changes are established far too quickly for results to be thoroughly examined. The most popular cries for education changes comes from Geoffrey Canada’s stating that “billions of dollars spent on testing, the data cannot be used, because the results come back too late (Canada, 2013). Now, the average person may not be too alarmed, but when companies, like Microsoft or Apple, has to hire computer programming engineers from other countries to fill positions since American’s are academically unqualified, which brings this education system to light on such topics (Moore, 34-36). In all, the public school system is

Education is the essential foundation for the progressing of our nation as well as the stimulation for our children. Now, as some may or may-not know that learning gives forth children the accessibility to succeed in physical, intellectual, and even emotional endeavors. Education tends to incline us to widen the door towards attainment in the future. As individuals receive an education, they are more capable to obtain better employment. Views tend to be various to our educational system. Throughout America’s history, students, parents, educators, and government authority have discussed what changes must be made in America’s public school system. We agree changes need to be made to reach goals that will prepare our future for the future properly. However, the voices and cries for positive changes have yet to be heard. Sometimes, many of those changes are established far too quickly for results to be thoroughly examined. The most popular cries for education changes comes from Geoffrey Canada’s stating that “billions of dollars spent on testing, the data cannot be used, because the results come back too late (Canada, 2013). Now, the average person may not be too alarmed, but when companies, like Microsoft or Apple, has to hire computer programming engineers from other countries to fill positions since American’s are academically unqualified, which brings this education system to light on such topics (Moore, 34-36). In all, the public school system is lacking government

Prince EA, a motivational filmmaker, poet, and speaker, made a YouTube video about the United States education system, he opens with a quote from Albert Einstein that states, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” To put this into perspective, standardized tests represent the tree and students represent the fish. Most students don’t process information in the same way. In Fact, it’s widely accepted that different approaches to learning have numerous advantages to stimulate

Prince EA, a motivational filmmaker, poet, and speaker, made a YouTube video about the United States education system, he opens with a quote from Albert Einstein that states, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” To put this into perspective, standardized tests represent the tree and students represent the fish. Most students don’t process information in the same way. In Fact, it’s widely accepted that different approaches to learning have numerous advantages to stimulate

Standardized testing causes teachers to only “teach the test” which means they neglect other subjects in school to only focus on the material that will be on the test; this leaves students feeling frustrated, stressed, negative, and unengaged.In a study conducted by the Center on Educational Policy, the data showed that 71% of schools reduced time spent in class in at least one non-tested subject in order to expand the time allowed for subjects tested, such as reading and math. Similarly, 33% of schools in the districts reduced time in social studies, 29% of schools decreased time in science, and 22% reduced time spent on music and art. This causes children to become so tired with their increased amount of learning, that they become frustrated with their teachers, their peers, and the school themselves. What is society doing when it overworks kids so

Some of the curriculum that can be very important for future classes and even college can be cut out because the test maker could not fit it onto the test. That lost curriculum leaves students unprepared for the future and adds a level of meniality to tests that decreases the student’s motivation for learning. “For example, reading is reduced to short passages followed by multiple-choice questions, a kind of "reading" that does not exist in the real world. Writing becomes the "five-paragraph essay" that is useless except on standardized tests… Teaching to the test does not produce real and sustained gains on independent learning measures. Teaching to the test does not work if the goal is high-quality learning.” (Fairtest.org). Teachers need to start focusing on actually teaching the students instead of giving them a good grade or following the standard that the state sets. In fact the No Child Left Behind act in 2002 made it mandatory for states to test elementary students from 3-8th grade in order to help ‘close the achievement gap’ by giving all children a fair opportunity to a high level education through standardized testing. The tests would score a student on their math and reading skills to place them into a certain level of class for their level of intelligence. This only widened the achievement gap because the students in the higher level classes learn more and do better on the tests while the students who did not do as well were stuck in lower level classes at a slower learning speeds. For some students this was a good thing because a higher class would be too overwhelming for them and they would be left behind. Many students, however, got stuck in the lower level classes because of testing inaccuracy and the fact that these elementary school students were given up to sixty problem tests that they had neither the patience nor

Schneider argues that if schooling is truly broken, then educational progress should be impossible. He instead proposes that educational systems are steadily improving, just at a slow pace. Schneider states three main points: teachers have improved, modern curriculum is sufficient, and grading scores are higher. Schneider points out how the average US teacher is better prepared on adolescent cognition than the average teacher from any past period. Furthermore, he says that modern curriculum being a “relic of the past” is a myth, as modern curriculum has brought more positive differences than negative. Finally, Schneider claims that the system cannot be broken if student scores have been substantially higher in the past 40 years, with the greatest

As George W. Bush once asked, “Is our children learning?”. If you are wondering if I messed up that quote, I didn’t. American public education has been standardized, and it is affecting this nation’s youth in a harmful way. What I mean by “standardization” is that the information being spoonfed to students by their teachers is pre-organized, pre-determined, and regulated, adhering to a schedule that is set by the Board of Education. The Board may think that this is a good idea, that it keeps organization in the school system, and that it makes public education more convenient for the teachers. What the Board of Education doesn’t know is that standardization is putting the minds of their students in a very small box, only allowing a miniscule

In the average school day, each class is 50 minutes long and we have 7 classes, 4 of those classes are your core classes that you will need to graduate. Raise your hand if when you are in those classes, and the teacher is teaching do you think to yourself "When am I ever going to use this?" Or "Why is she spending so much time talking about a test?" Well in my opinion, SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS ARE SO FOCUS ON STANDARDIZED TESTING, THAT THEY DON’T TEACH THE SAME AS THEY USED TO. Standardized test was made way too hard for students to be able to pass tests But, even with laws in place kids can still fail a grade if they do not pass a test. And last, schools are spending too much time on helping make sure kids will pass a test, that students are leaving