Role Of Education In Public Education

“Since media are part of the political class and talk mostly to the political class, the myth of popular polarization took root and grew.” (Fiorina, Abrams, Pope, 2005, p. 167). Recently media has played a huge role in the country’s politic; they share information, report events, and frame opinions.

In Kisautaq Lenona Okakok’s essay “Serving the Purpose of Education” she discusses the education dilemma in her borough of North Slope, Alaska, where many of the occupants are indigenous people of the Inupiat. Western education was thrust upon the Inupiat people of Alaska, changing the traditional way they taught their children. Okakok explains why and how The Board of Education for North Slope, Alaska took entire control of their education system after having Western education try to influence their way of teaching. The way the Inupiat teach is different from that of Western education, not only do they teach a different language (Inupiaq), they also need to teach a different curriculum that is better suited for the people of the North Slope compared to that of Western education. Okakok’s essay analyzes the way Western culture and teachings influenced her own culture, and how the Inupiat have taken control of their own education again while using considerable examples to defend her claims.

The goals of public education revolve around three main areas that include; the political goals of schooling, the social goals of schooling, and the economic goals of schooling. These goals were placed with the idea that all children should receive public education whether you were poor or rich and schools focused on teaching about political views and the law to avoid conflicts. Schools were the focus of many hopes for political, social, and economic improvement.

Education is considered a right in most first world countries and compulsory public education has been in effect in the United States for over a century. So, why do governments have trouble assigning a purpose to public education and experiencing student growth across the board? How can schools change their approach in order to ensure that their students are ready to create their own opportunities? Scholar and politician Winston Churchill notes in his autobiography, My Early Life, “But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross of either Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.” (p. 113) From this it can be concluded that Churchill believes the purpose of education is to teach students how to be active in their community along with the importance of judgement and choice, in order to further the success of their country.

With the many diverse characteristics of the Unites States, perhaps the most troubling is the rising gap in the distribution of wealth. As the wealth gap in the United States rises exponentially, the gap in the quality of public schooling rises with it. For a country that prides itself in prestigious outlets of education, the system of public schooling seems to be miserably failing. Public education, a system that some fight to destroy while others fight to preserve, is perhaps the only source of academic opportunity for many individuals living in this country. The fact that someone can live in a certain area and receive a higher quality of public education than someone else living in a different area in the same country—even in the same state—is a problem that should not trouble a ‘progressive’ democratic society. Unfortunately, areas of lower socioeconomic status receive much less funding than areas of higher socioeconomic status, where property taxes account for 45% of funding in public school districts. Naturally, the impoverished residents of poor neighborhoods pay a harsh price in this situation, sending their children to an underfunded school with little to no resources, where sometimes teachers must supply the classroom from their own pocket. As Rogerson and Fernandez note, “a system that allows the accidents of geography and birth to determine the quality of education received by an individual is inimical to the idea of equal opportunity in the marketplace”

Throughout the years we have seen a decline in civic participation and duty in the United States. People can argue many different reasons on why there has been a decline in civic duty and participation, but the most influential causes are due to electoral campaigning, parental socialization, as well as news sources. These three issues have lead to a generational decline in United States political participation and these issues need to be fixed. If we cannot find a way of fixing these issues, our nation will see democracy slip through its fingers. On a road to solving our nation’s political participation problem the first stop would have to be fixing news sources.

The media has never had the extreme omnipresence it had during the most recent federal elections. For more and more people the media is becoming something habitual, and politicians were among the first to take advantage of this fact. Be it a parties usage of online social platforms, 24-hour news broadcasting stations, or circa the 1800s printed word, there is no doubt the typical citizen feels connected in some regards to this mass of media. With most third-party communication technologies surfacing within the recent decades, the general affect on citizens ' lives is not fully understood. This connection is immense and complex, but it can

Public education is a good that is privileged to everyone in the United States. While education may seem extensive and unnecessary, especially to youth, achieving an education has benefitted people through the history of the U.S., which in turn benefits the U.S.’s welfare. When Thomas Jefferson advocated the opening of public schools in the early 1800s, his plan was only half fulfilled; only wealthy communities could afford public schools (Watson 2). This remained true until the early to mid 1900s, where schooling became accessible for all, regardless of skill level or income. Since the mid 1950s, the U.S. has made tremendous leaps in not only technology, but also in the stabilization of the government and economy; these successes can be attributed to education. If that privilege to learning was no longer given, the U.S.’s development would be lost.

Education has undergone many rhetorical and definitional changes since its creation; the explicit purpose of teaching the masses, particularly in the framework of public schooling, has varied from culture to culture. At its core, though, the aim is simple: to efficiently construct productive members of a society. This effort has to encompass so much of the values of said societies that it becomes impossible for educational institutions to avoid the influence of larger institutions. Within these constraints comes the effect of social reproduction. This institutional byproduct of education rooted in societal values guarantees that students who come from lower income backgrounds are fated to experience this existence as adults, whereas students from higher income families have the advantages to follow in the footsteps of their parents. Without deeply studying and working to reverse social reproduction, our current educational system is the story of history repeating itself.

Over the centuries, the media has played a significant role in the shaping of societies across the globe. This is especially true of developed nations where media access is readily available to the average citizen. The media has contributed to the creation of ideologies and ideals within a society. The media has such an effect on social life, that a simple as a news story has the power to shake a nation. Because of this, governments around the world have made it their duty to be active in the regulation and control of media access in their countries. The media however, has quickly become dominated by major mega companies who own numerous television, radio and movie companies both nationally and

Education is an issue that touches everyone’s lives in one way or another. Whether you are a parent, student, teacher, taxpayer, or employee, the effects of education on society can be seen everyday. For this reason, public schools are a top concern among political leaders. Over the past twenty-five years, confidence in the nation’s public school system has dramatically declined. While the public for the most part seems to support their school district, criticism is not lacking. Recent years especially have shown dissipating support. It appears that the prevailing view is that public education, as a whole, is in bad condition and is in need of a renewed effort to fix it. Private schools seem to fare

The media influences how people experience social life. Media such as newspaper, television and film, are important sources of information, education and entertainment. It can be used to learn more about the world and the people in it. In this regard it can be said that the media represent, interpret and endorse aspects of social experience (O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, 2005). The media are also implicated in social regulation, or in other terms, the government of society. The media are implicated in government and politics in an obvious way because modern systems of democracy are conducted through the media. But the media have a bigger role to play in government by structuring how society is controlled and maintained.

Finally, the social ramifications of corporate media control contradict the culture of democratic institutions in American culture and society. This has become a major issue in the clash between government regulators and the corporate institutions that are continuing to consolidate into larger, and more powerful companies in the 21st century. In this manner, the regulation of corporate media organizations tends to deny the existence of “democracy” in the U.S., which continually makes claims about the freedom of expression and diversity of its populations. This is also true of the reduction of government regulation, which continues to allow the consolidation of corporate media into a small group of transnational corporate owners. One of the

The greatly discussed dilemma of having a child be taught in a public school setting versus a homeschool setting has been evaluated by parents since the idea was first introduced in the 1970’s. Public schooling had been the standard method of teaching since it is a requirement for states to provide public, free education for children in grades K-12. However, the backlash against the system began when two educational theorists and supporters of school reform, John Holt and Raymond Moore, started to question both the techniques and the products of public schools. Some parents went on to support the ideas of them and began to teach their children in the environment of their own homes for several different reasons. Some included moral or religious reasons, a desire for high educational achievement, dissatisfaction with public schools’ instructional program, or concerns about drugs and peer pressure in a public school environment. Child development specialists believe that homeschooled children are isolated from the outside world, therefore making them socially handicapped. If being exposed to this type of education on an elementary school level, the child can suffer from the lack of fundamental development of effective social skills needed for a lifetime ahead of them.

In the past years America has been slowly reaching a boiling point as a civic culture. Advancements in technology help people connect with each other but is actually having a downward spiral in democracy in American society. As technology continues to move forward the pot starts to boil more intensely. Technology should help improve democracy by allowing citizens to unite and express opinions, but organizations are abusing media to gain fame. It is this abusement of media use that limits the population to account for their own actions because the general public is being brainwashed to believe biased information through social media. Civic Culture has been declining rapidly in recent years and action needs to be taken before the consequences are irreversible.