Summary: The Importance Of Public Education

Public education gives all students the opportunity to gain a quality education within Australia. This education is of a high quality and free, thus creating fairness for all.

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.

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

As a high school student in 2016, school is a very stressful and important thing. I love education and learning, but school seems to be pushing students away from that. I personally am passionate about American history and politics and I want to study and interpret important pieces of American history such as the Constitution and help the world somehow with that, but I have to instead spend hours on quadratic equations and memorizing every step as to how the cell divides. School is extremely important. If it weren’t for school, then I wouldn’t have found this passion of mine. I was in 8th grade US History class when I did, and it has changed the path I am taking in life. But I think

Democracy and education are highly inseparable and they could not exist without each other. Education is a process in which an individual develops entirely as a person, whether it is physically, mentally, or socially so that they can become an active member in not only society, but also life itself. An educated individual is one who does activities that they enjoy and faces the problems they encounter without turning away from them.

“‘The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves’” (Strauss). Our founding fathers wanted our nation to be an educated nation. There were many who believed that only a chosen should be educated, but there were those who saw education to be more pervasive. During the 1800s Horace Mann revolutionized the ideas with public education; however, today we now face an education system lacking in religious classes, group projects, and outside stimulation.

Education has a tremendous impact on the human society. It begins at birth and continues until a person’s last day on earth. Human beings gain knowledge and information through education, and use them constantly throughout their lives. Leaders of nations have been thinking constantly how to educate their citizens, because of education’s role as a vital instrument in the development of an individual and society. There are different forms of education exist in the human society. The Most obvious one is the public education. The society offers the free public education to its citizens and citizens are required to take proper education in order to become vital members of the society. The public education, and

Specific purpose: After reading my paper, my audience will understand the importance of the public education system in America, as well as the areas in which it could improve to have a more meaningful, lasting effect on the students.

Among the hardest decisions presented to a parent in modern society is the choice of how to properly educate their children. In determining which system is best suited for a child of a particular family, the goals must be understood by each parent and several variables evaluated. Without regard for if a child will be joining the workforce or attending a post-secondary education, one must decide if it is more beneficial to attend public or private school. To determine which system is best, the effects of how an education is provided from both public and private schools will be evaluated in this paper.

Ever since the Declaration of Independence established each American’s right to liberty and equality, a natural conflict between individual self-interest and the general public good has shaped the judgments of this nation’s citizens on the critical issues their democracy faces. Two of these significant issues are the closely related subjects of systemic inequity in education and wealth inequality. The reality of these issues, and the nation’s attempts to address that reality, have resulted in significant consequences for both individual interests and the common good of the nation. In their own individual ways, each issue threatens democracy, the public good, and the interest of individual. The extensive impact of these issues causes many citizens to lose sight of collective goals and creates a political climate in which even positive change is resisted. These critical issues that threaten both collective and individual goals might be somewhat easier to address if Americans took it upon themselves to practice good democratic citizenship through reflecting on the principles upon which this country was founded, employing a publicly-minded perspective, and sacrificing individual interests for the public good when necessary.

All over television, commercials are shown about the suffering countries trapped in the merciless claws of poverty. Heartstrings are tugged and people yearn to act in valiancy to save those desperate people. The solution is quite a bit simpler contrary to what most people think- public education. Public education improves the economic status - provides better jobs -, improves the citizens’ status, and improves the overall status of a country. Some cultures would argue that their women should not be educated, however, women are human beings with equal rights and should be granted the privilege of being educated; likewise, over half of most countries’ population consist of women, thus annexing them into the educated society would be extremely valuable to the country.

“Youth who drop out [of high school] generally experience negative outcomes—unemployment, underemployment, and incarceration.” The inadequacy of our education system disrupts our economic health, and will only progress if nothing changes. “School dropouts report unemployment rates as much as 40% higher than youth who have completed school. Arrest rates are alarming for youth with disabilities who drop out of school— 73% for students with emotional/behavioral disabilities and 62% for students with learning disabilities. More than 80% of individuals incarcerated are high school dropouts (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 1995)” (“Students with Disabilities who Drop Out of School—Implications for Policy and Practice”). As evidenced by statistics like these the question isn’t does public education need reform, but as Ken Robinson states in “Changing the Education Paradigms,” “how do we educate our children to take their place in the 21st century?” This at least should be clear: we cannot “meet the future by doing they what did in the past” (2). It’s time for change. For instance, our education system must become more inclusive by acknowledging intelligence and potential in all shapes and sizes. Our tendency to categorize people as either “academic or non-academic [has caused] many brilliant people to think they’re not because they’ve been judge by a particular view of the mind” (Robinson 2). We can all agree that we want to be acknowledged as individuals in

“Media corporations have a civic responsibility not only to prevent fraud and financial abuse, but also to not corrupt or degrade our culture” (Pickering, 2017). Society has always had an interest in how students are educated in schools and prepared for citizenship to take part in civic life since the late 1800’s. Because of the limited civic knowledge, poor civic dispositions, and dysfunctional political landscape, it was the job of the schools to produce responsible citizens in the world. Civic Education in a democracy is education in self-government that is essential to sustain our constitutional democracy because it is not inherited. Citizens are expected to be responsible and to make thoughtful decisions in regards to the issues in their communities and the elected officials voted into office to lead our nation. Back in the 1800’s, according to physician and founder Benjamin Rush, schools should “convert men into republican machines” fitting them “to each other by means of education” so that as well-crafted civic gears, they could “perform their parts properly to produce regularity and unison in government” (Johanek, 2012). Even though civic education in a democracy is education in self-government, media plays a significant role in today’s society, in strengthening and shaping our world into a global village by reducing the communication gaps amongst people living in other areas of the country.

Since the beginning of public education, the responsibility of schools falls to the states. Through the eighteenth century, public education was only for the wealthy due to the belief that poor children were not worthy of being educated. “In 1852, however then secretary of state of Massachusetts Horace Mann urged that states be obliged to offer public education to all children. The revolutionary idea behind this plea was that all individuals could and should be educated irrespective of economic class” (School Discipline History).

The intimate relationship between education and democracy defines how a society operates. Being a prerequisite for the survival and success of the society, education is given primacy as it fosters democratic temper in the minds of people. Given that education plays a large role in how the country will run, it is vital that democratic values such as liberty, equality, cooperation, sharing of responsibility, and justice are taught to make learning more effective, relevant, and useful. These ideals are essential to maintaining and improving a functional democracy in not only the United States, but in any country. As Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” (qtd. in Editors, 1) I believe the purpose of education in a democracy is to produce participating democratic citizens who are trained to make the basic decisions about who will lead our country in logic, history, and philosophy.