Edumacation

Hello!

               In this post I’m going to be discussing school in general, and my opinions on it. Public education in America today is so much different than schools in other countries, and many people think that it is worse because of this.

               In the United States we have two different school systems, public and parochial. That means that one school is essentially free to go to, but the other you have to pay tuition. Based on this system, Americans assume that private schools are much better. Anything you pay for in life has to be better, right? This may be true by statistics, but I certainly know a lot of students from private schools that aren’t the best students when they transferred to public schools. Both of America’s school systems are required to take certain standardized tests, but they don’t effect your chances of doing anything until you get to the higher levels of education. Most colleges require you take certain tests to get in, for example.

In other countries, though, school is done completely differently. They have only the one school system, which you have to not only pay a tuition to attend, but have to pass tests to get into at all levels. Lots of people say that that’s the way to go, because you have to have an active interest in school to get an education. I would agree.

Around the nation, many schools are implementing No Child Left Behind laws. These laws say that a teacher can’t fail a student. In my opinion this is not only punishing the teachers, but both the other students in the class and the student who would have failed.  It makes it so the teachers have to deal with students that don’t know the material in future years. For example, a student that should have failed from Language Arts in ninth grade is passed on to Language Arts in tenth grade, but doesn’t know the material. Then the teacher has to re-teach everything to this student. It also punishes the other students because they have to go at a slower pace to account for this lower-leveled student. Then the bad student moves on to the real world and realizes that he or she doesn’t know anything. That would suck to be them.

Recently, though, people have been complaining that America has such a low ranking for education. I think that comparing America, where we teach everyone, to a place like Japan, where they only teach those who can afford it and pass the tests, is ridiculous. A comparison like that can’t be made. So although our education system may not seem like the best, we still do teach everyone. Therefore we win. Go ‘Merica.

Thanks for reading!

Matt Finley