Our Education System Is Broken

Our education system does a terrible job shaping children into professionals. Education is arguably the most important thing a society can do to improve itself, and it is also something that this country, the United States, fails at miserably.

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...the researchers ranked the United States No. 18 out of 24 nations in terms of the relative effectiveness of its educational system.

Now this study was done in 2003, but this laissez faire presidency, I think it's safe to say that not much has changed. The article cites our processes of teaching to be the problem. It says we base our education around procedure and not content.

I happen to agree, but I think it goes further than that. Tests like the Myers-Briggs test often aren't offered to students until they reach high school or beyond. The fact is, we fail at customizing education to real maximum potential - or even close to it.

What can a school do when it puts its mind to it?

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The Ospedale della Pietà is a convent, orphanage, and music school in Venice.

It opened in the early fifteenth century as a charitable institution intended to provide for orphaned and abandoned girls

These women were trained to be virtuosos in music. This was possible because they focused the education on it, and most people can accomplish next to anything with the right training and determination.

These days, we barrage kids with a multitude of general education subjects that don't challenge anyone with an IQ above average. The system seems to revolve around kids with average intelligence, and forgets about the children who don't need to hear a subject 50 times to understand it.

What does this result in? Kids get bored. Maybe the do drugs, perhaps they drop out, or maybe they just never accomplish what they could have. A few hundred years ago, it wasn't odd for kids to be prodigies by the time they were 5 or 6 years old. Why?

People recognized traits in their children and fostered those traits to maximize their ability at success. We see kids who are amazing writers, yet we waste their time until they are 20 before we let them really get into the technicalities of the subject. There are kids who are amazing at math and sciences, but we bog their brains down with history dates and other miscellaneous information.

But even then, the kids are smart. They can handle the barrage with no problem, and eventually, they get so bored that it all becomes monotonous. School becomes a chore instead of being exciting.

It is no longer about finding out what is the best path for him/her to follow, but rather stuffing their head with everything so that it can all be sorted out later.

In my opinion, this is why the country is falling behind in all other aspects. It is partially responsible for poverty rates, crime rates, and all other issues we face in society today.

The education needs to be revamped. Money needs to be disbursed more evenly between all schools, and the focus needs to be about a good education that focuses on the strengths of each individual student.

People are all different, so why would it make sense that a generalized education would be beneficial to anyone?

While I do see the need for some generalized education in order to teach the basics to kids I totally agree that the monotonous and boring tone of school is in a huge part responsible for the poor education our kids are getting. Their needs to be more specialty type classes in art, music and science with an increasing option for the child to focus on the study that they do best in over time.

right now my son is in 1st grade, he is a very bright child but hates school. Today he was in tears because he missed 10 problems on a math quiz..so I pulled it out to look at it and was highly annoyed. It was a timed math test with 50 addition problems to be done in two minutes....for 6 and 7 yr olds!!!

I'm sorry but if he knows what 7+7 and 4+5 are how does it possibly matter if he can do it in two minutes?!?

Here's a couple links for you to consider.

www.youtube.com...
video.google.com...

I'm in favor of adopting a policy similar to what the Netherlands has. Effectively privatize the school system and have the tax money attached to each kid. Eliminate "Zones", if you live in Seattle and want to send your kid to a school in Miami, go right ahead. If a school sucks, it closes, and kids can go to different ones.

While this has been true in the past, there are, as we speak, many reforms being put into place which will turn our education system around without a dramatic increase in costs. The importance of content knowledge and pedagogical repertoire is stressed now more than ever, as is personalized education and mastery exhibition. These are the methods and reforms being taught to the current generation of teachers, and I know because I was training to become one for most of my undergraduate career.

In the next generation, barring any unforeseen setbacks, I believe the US public education system will be overhauled, as has been done in various individual schools to great effect. Our next President's goal to provide a "world-class education" may indeed be realized. I am pleased that he plans to change NCLB so that it supports rather than punishes schools, but it will take more drastic change than that.

NCLB is concerned with test performance, and so standardized tests have been adopted by some states as graduation requirements. This is a severe mistake, and has not been successful. It has influenced curriculum design in that the curriculum is often tailored to the test. This is foolish, and hopefully we can do away with it in the coming years. We need to focus on mastery-based education which is tailored to the individual students involved. This is much more effective, with the only potential drawback is that students may get less of a broad view of a particular field, but the benefits far outweigh this. It is not as if the current model works well at its supposed goal anyway.

So I know things look bad right now, but I have seen examples of dramatic improvements across all levels of public education, so take heart - we'll get there.

reply to post by gluetrap


That's crazy. I think tests like that are fine, but shouldn't be graded on a scale that is good or bad. There is no reason for a kid to know that he isn't a math prodigy at 7.

Perhaps he isn't a math prodigy, but is just good with numbers. Or maybe he'll be better at writing or sciences. This is what the school needs to find out. And instead of harsh grading and repetitive rhetoric, the school should be helping him find out who he is as early as possible.

reply to post by CrowServo


Those are all good things to hear! I hope that schools will balance the scales of funding across each state. I grow tired of hearing about poor kids not having access to up-to-date computers, technology, or books.

I also grow tired of seeing some of the smartest kids around get thrown under the bus because they aren't interested in the same drivel that ordinary kids are, and/or aren't as talented in one field as another.

Science tells us that many kids can be gifted in one area while lacking in the other. Obviously it's still important to develop the weak spots, but the strongest points should be emphasized, and kids should be given as much confidence as possible.

This is all just my opinion, but it just seems so obvious to me.