Failing Grades
Budget cuts, tuition hikes, “no child left behind.” All of these things are helping us make the American education system into yet another failure.
Firstly, I feel badly for teachers. American children are required to be in school whether they want to be or not. Teachers are required to attempt to teach them. Subsequently, the government is blaming teachers for “failing” by judging their students’ performance. I don’t care if you have a teacher who is the perfect blend of Einstein and Mister Rogers - if a kid doesn’t want to learn, he’s not going to. There’s no need to explain this any futher; we can even look at our politicians and see how even a perfect explanation with sound logic and pure intent can fall on deaf ears. How many times have we told our politicians that this is case? And how many times have they failed to listen, acknowledge, and take action?
The longer I sit here and write this stream of conscious, the more i realize that what this all boils down to is quite possibly the fact that people refuse to be accountable, and when they are held accountable and are displeased with the outcome, they place blame.
It’s the kids’ fault. But no one wants to blame the angelic innocent child (or their parents). So there are no repercussions for the actions of the child: failure is not an option. Even if a child is a “failure,” we’ve made it so that it isn’t their fault - it’s their teacher’s fault. Teachers cannot make kids care. Instead of making students (and/or parents) accountable, we are making teachers accountable for the failures of others. Ridiculous.
Secondly, I do not believe that everyone should go to college. The recent global economic crisis should be another clear example of this rationale. Countless college graudates sat idly unemployed for months - even years - with degrees that did not fulfill a business or economic need. The perception that a college degree is necessary for success is one of the most untrue statements that have ever been made. People who were meant to be great will rise to the top and will find ways to take advantage of any beneficial resource, but a “beneficial resource” is not necessarily a formal education. It may be anything from hands-on experience, to military/police training, to vocational school, to daily activities… and beyond. Unfortuantely (and fortunately for some), the only thing that many college degrees prove is that an individual is willing to enroll in something beyond a requirement and to complete that undertaking. But in my eyes, a meaningless American history (i’m just picking on history - it’s nothing personal) degree to a person working as an “administrative assistant” is an enormous waste of time and money. Investment versus return… is your ROI what you had expected? Probably not for most people. And the worst part is the sense of entitlement that many people feel because they have that degree. “I have a college degree, so I should have a job.” No, not necessarily. And now, because nearly everyone has a college degree, those who actually are meant to rise to the top oftentimes have to jump through a few more hoops such as an extra degree (that they may not actually need because they already know the concepts in both theory and practice due to experience), or a few more training classes (that are unnecessary but they need that completion certificate). That is quite unfortunate for our society as a whole. A sense of entitlement is making everyone lazy.
Success is not contingent upon the actions of others. It is the sole responsibility of the person who desires to be successful. Because no one who makes decisions regarding education (or the future of education) realizes this, we are failing, and will continue to do so.
I recently saw something that gave me a glimmer of hope in the case of falling education. One of the statistics that is always brought up during educational reform is classroom size. In order to combat this, some states have offered incentives to students to graduate from high school early, as much as three years early in some cases. The students who want to work hard and get ahead can be taking college courses (at a four year institution) at the age of 16, thereby freeing up classroom and teacher contact for other students who need it more. Who knows how this will play out, but as someone who spent most of his senior year bored and drinking in the parking lot, this sounds like a good idea.
Yea, that was up in the NE, Penn, NJ, Maine, & Mass. I think. Really neat idea to stop holding back the kids who want to push and let the teachers focus on the kids that need help rather than keeping the others entertained. The obvious question is whether those students are emotionally ready for a CC at 16, but if handled correctly I see no reason why not.
Lindsay, you skipped the biggest crap degree in the nation, PSYCHOLOGY. History majors normally know they can’t do crap w/ their degree, but I know several psych majors from tiny little CC’s who don’t know why the only job they can find is as a flight attendant or receptionist when “i got a college education.” Fuck that, u got drunk for 2-5 years at a crappy school and got a diploma that basically reads “I continued going to HS and wasted a lot of mommy n daddy n tax payer money.” Ok, you already ranted about this but fuck self-entitlement!