School Vs Education By Russel Baker

Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he is fed for a lifetime. In today’s society, education is very similar to this statement. Schools are commanded to teach aspects of life that only benefit the student for an end-of-the-year test. Students are not taught what is to come in the life after school. Because of the poor quality in education today, the emphasis on standardized test has become overwhelming.

The function of the education system is to improve students education and prepare them for the real world. Students within that system should receive an “A” when they have mastered the information they are being taught. However, grades no longer accurately reflect how much students have learned. Since 1998 teachers have handed out more A-grades while the average SAT scores have actually fallen. In fact, as Greg Toppo states, an author for USA Today, the amount of A’s handed out actually went up close to ten percent (4). Students can manipulate their courses so that they can get good grades without actually learning much of anything. With grades not accurately representing what students have learned and charter schools failing to solve problehms, teachers need to change how they structure their class or grade assignments.

Young people wind up neglecting high school for various reasons. In this circumstance, a number of students either don't have the aspiration to remain in school or they simply cannot stand to pay the tuition. In a couple of cases, the students dropout, as a result of low quality teaching. According to the article, Let Kids Rule The School by Susan Engel, she states “I recently followed a group of eight public high school students, aged 15 to 17, in Western Massachusetts as they designed & ran their own school within a school.” This quote shows that in our society today, its critical to consider who our 'associates' are in a peer learning group & how they don’t have a part like an educator.

In most affluent schools, parents have the expectation that their kids are being offered a full liberal arts curriculum that will allow them to further their creativity and curiosity. However, many schools have been only focusing on the subjects that are being tested on standardized tests set by the state, because they receive more school funding if they achieve higher test scores. In her article titled “The Essentials of a Good Education”, Diane Ravitch, utilizing direct examples of schools, and policies that limit student’s knowledge of the arts in order to have more time preparing for tests, points out that this shift in focus is causing students to suffer academically and is killing their curiosity and creativity.

In the year 2001, the United States government passed and established a law called the No Child Left Behind Act. This law created a set of standards for public schools to follow to prepare their students for college. For that to occur, schools must have their students to meet the minimum testing score in Math and Reading. If students do not reach the minimum requirement, that school would not receive federal funding. Diane Ravitch was an original supporter of this law but later changed her mind after realizing that schools became more focused in basic skills like Math and Reading and started to ignore other subjects that were deemed irrelevant since these subjects would not help a school recieve federal funding. In her essay, The Essentials of a Good Education, Diane Ravitch uses effective reasoning and pathos to persuade her audience that there is more to education than just the quality of test scores and that incorporating other subjects can be crucial to a student’s participation in society.

The United States of America used to be known as one of the greatest countries to be apart of. From the jobs to the economy to education people loved to be apart of the American culture. The problem many Americans are facing today is poor education. Since America is viewed as a high profile country many people have prominent expectations on what they are receiving, specifically the education. The fact is that there are major problems with all levels of the education system today. Starting with early education, teachers are quick to say children needs to be medicated or put into special education. Proceeding to the general or high school education where kids are graduating but not prepared for what’s after. Lastly how higher education or college can hardly be afforded in today’s society. As a result of the failing education system, many parents blame the child or society when in actuality the failing system is corrupted by some teachers, lack of preparation, and lack of affordability in higher education.

Bruni quotes the President of the National Center on Education, Marc Tucker, “ Our students have an inflated sense of their academic prowess.They don’t expect to spend much time studying, but they confidently expect good grades and marketable degrees”(par.25). From a young age we need to teach these children you succeed from hard work. Many parents have been exempting their children from test and are expecting them to learn? In order for kids to be able to learn what they need to, parents need to allow them to deal with the difficult times.

The Essentials of a Good Life by Diane Ravitch was an essay that really got me rethinking what we call the school system today. It felt extremely relatable since I have spent over 13 years in school and I recognize almost all the points she made about the problems with school today. Many of her main points have to do with how schools are too focused on standardized testing and how they don’t teach creativity in school. This is a big problem in today’s society because school seems to be doing a lot less of what it was first meant to do which is prepare their students for the future. After reading her essay I believe we shouldn’t be focused on standardized testing and we should be spending more time teaching students how to be leaders, independent, and creative because these are qualities that promote success in today’s society.

The American Education System is not meeting the needs of current students. If anything, the system is not building a sturdy foundation for the future working class. Schools have existed for many years and through the years they have worked differently. However, every school’s main purpose was to educate students to be efficacious later in life. Modern day schools are corrupting students with added pressure, making fewer accommodations for special education students, and take away individualism. Along with those are problems comes numerous others. The students of modern times are the people of our future and the future does not look too bright with the current American Education System.

In ‘Miseducating the Young’, David Brooks uses metaphors along with life expectation of growing up and questions that propose how society is able to prepare the next generation for their future in a way for them to navigate everything life throws towards them. David Brooks talks about how college students are left to figure out their life the moment after they receive their diplomas. Brooks continues to mention about how children are placed into school for years and years becoming book smart, but students are not receiving meaningful tactics on how to prepare for their future in the real world.

In chapter one titled “The Meaning of a School,” Mara Casey Tieken begins her book and the chapter by providing a vivid account of her experience in Vanleer, Tennessee, a rural school district, and how living there influenced her as an educator. During this time, Tieken became acquainted with ‘country living’ and adapted to many lifestyle changes. Through her experience, the author challenged the written misconceptions that educators and politicians create due to their lack of knowledge regarding rural school systems. Tieken further discussed the lack of attention that rural schools received in the political and educational sphere. Unfortunately, legislative policies, politicians, and educators geared their attention towards urban school

Many teachers these days are “teaching to the test” and hurting their students in the process. The students are not properly taught to retain information that will be helpful in the future. Many students are taught to memorize the information for the test and to never look back on that information until an exam, where the whole memorizing process starts again. The information is never fully learned or understood. “ students ... have very little idea how they can apply the information throughout their lives” (Source F). Many students cannot remember what they have learned up to the current week, and many researchers have found that since the information is not currently being used, it has been pushed to the back of the mind and in most cases, forgotten. Researchers have found that many students forget up to 60% of material that they learned in high school before moving to a university. The information that has been consumed by students is not being applied in real life situations. And the tests will not help students in the future with getting jobs or any real-world knowledge. “Instead of being able to explain what they can DO with the information they have learned (i.e., order food at a restaurant from language class, determine appropriate change while shopping from math class), students often only cite the technical

“The child soon learns not to ask questions - the teacher is not there to satisfy his curiosity” (Holt 73). This is what John Holt thinks the American education system is all about. He thinks that school is a place where individuality and creativity come to die. He wrote an essay that explains his belief further that is titled, “School is bad for Children.” Holt uses several rhetorical devices and logical fallacies such as generalizations - stereotypes, making assumptions, and “either or fallacy” that weakens his argument.

“Our educational goal [is] the production of caring, competent, loving, lovable people” . The students found in the schools across the United State are the future of America. They are the doctors, teachers, business people, lawyers and many other roles, that will be out in the workforce in the years to come. What they learn in school will impact them immensely; it is the responsibility of a teacher to give students the best education in order to ensure the common good of the future. It is essential for students to not only learn content matter, but also the skills to enable them to participate in a democracy. Due to standardized testing, the emphasis of education has become on score and rankings rather than learning. A standardized test does not look at the whole student, the scores provided are on a very narrow aspect of education. In the classroom, there are countless ways for teachers to assess the student as a whole person not as just a score. Standardized tests scores should not be the sole criteria for determining a student’s academic achievement.

According the most recent national assessment recorded in the Washington post, “the nations high school seniors have shown no improvement in math and reading performances since 2009.” In the most recent years, education has taken a huge downfall. Since 2010, over 45% of students drop out. Many students have problems with the grading system, so many different testing programs and having to follow a set of rules and not expand on those rules. The education system needs to induce more creativity, enforce the ways on how education is important and elaborate more on the rules of grading.