Pierce, Julie
9/25/12
English 101
Bergert
Education in America
“Education is the cornerstone of a prospering country.
Our nation is in peril without a progressive educational system that trains our
youth to be productive culture-shaping leaders.” (thegrio.com) I believe this
statement to be 100% accurate. Before being assigned this homework I had no
idea that our future was in such danger and that education is clearly the
answer. Being a young adult in America, I’m not naïve to the fact that a lot of
people do not attend college and those that do, obtain pointless degrees. They
put all this time and money into a degree that they really won’t be able to use
very much in the future and in turn become stuck with mounting debt that they
cannot pay off.
We, as a nation need to come together and realize the
importance of a quality education. We have to do something today if we want a
better tomorrow. We cannot expect the problem to fix itself. One of the reasons
this is hard to do is because it is often difficult to identify the source of
the problem because every scenario is different. Sometimes children don’t go to
college because of a bad teacher or a lazy parent. Sometimes the problem lies
within the particular school system itself. Other times the student does not
want to go farther because they do not see the importance of education and the
possible impact they could have on the world.
We also need to acknowledge that the goal is not always
college. The goal is some sort of further education that will lead to the
individual being able to provide for themselves and their future family one
day. We are trying to create independent, hard-working, goal-oriented youth for
tomorrows America. Trade schools should be looked at with the same respect as
that of colleges. These students are still driven, if fact sometimes these
students are smarter because they chose something that will work uniquely for
THEM instead of mainstreaming and going to college because they feel they
should.
The problem could very easily, in most cases, be the
result of a bad teacher. You may ask yourself, ‘Then why do we have bad
teachers? Why don’t we get rid of them?’ This problem is not easy to fix
either. Our ‘good’ teachers will often times find other ways to use their
degrees, because as the saying goes, “Teachers are under paid and over worked.”
This is also a reason so many potentially great teachers shy away from this
profession. They know that their gift simply won’t pay the bills. So our
children get stuck with mediocre teachers who generally don’t care to be there
and don’t give much thought to their potential impact on every single student
they come across.
The last problem I’d like to address, although keep in
mind there are many I haven’t touched on, is the lack of individualization
within classrooms, special needs programs, and testing standards. There is
little to no room for a student to learn what THEY want to learn. Every student
is required to learn the same material and be able to show that knowledge in
the same way as everyone else on a state exam that does not account for
individual circumstances in any way.
We all have a responsibly to our children and our country
to improve education in any way that we can. We could be loosing out on things
we cannot even imagine because the future Albert Einstein’s of America don’t
see the importance in education. This problem was not created over night and
therefore will not be solved quickly either but I truly believe that it can be
done.
