Pollitical Affairs Reader Essay Contest
The American Education System:What is to be Done?
By Briana M. Wright
The American public education system was founded on the radical notion that all members of society should have equal access to education. Also crucial was the notion that a basic common education was essential for a true democracy. This revolutionary system is now in indisputable trouble. Many worry about America’s ability to compete with foreign countries while others address the growing dichotomy between the quality of education in different economic areas. Recent rural shootings have only exasperated the problem, and caused many parents to entirely abandon the public system for a private alternative.
A flurry of solutions has been suggested, ranging from school uniforms to government grants. Unfortunately, many of these solutions are merely superficial. Uniforms, Internet access, and new buildings will do little to help overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers, and disinterested students. The most obvious answer seems to lie in government grants to remedy buildings and supplies and standardized testing to confirm the quality of every education.
However, the problems inherent in the American school system are too complex to be solved purely by money. Without interested parties watching the consumption of money, resources are consumed unwisely. A new arm of the executive branch should not be formed to act as a school watchdog, at the least it seems this would unnecessarily complicate things. Instead, the solution lies in the activity of parents in the school carefully observing the condition of the building, classrooms, and teachers. Parents should be directly involved in the school and should provide the initial stimulus.Only afterwards should the government get involved.
Standardized testing has often been seen as a fair method of assuring every school in America is giving students an equal education. While a good idea in theory, I fear it could lead to a school curriculum that is focused solely on improving test scores to attract new students. Again, although the government should be available for assistance, the standard for measurement of students should come from the affected children and their parents.
The division between the test scores of American and Asian high school students has recently become a matter of many debates in many circles. Often the conclusion is that the American system is not fulfilling its role of making competent citizens, and that America will soon be unable to compete in the global economic market. Before I discuss the differences between Western and Eastern attitudes towards education that feed this test score split, I will review an important factor that is often overlooked in these statistics. The school systems of Japan and Korea do not attempt to educate the entire population of the country. Instead, only the most successful grammar school students are chosen to go on to higher education. In contrast, America makes education beyond grammar school not only available but required. Therefore, while the test scores represent all of American children, they only represent a select number of Asian students.
These test scores do not reflect that American students are not as intelligent or as able to compete as Asian students are. Instead, they reflect a difference in attitudes that the American system could benefit from observing. In his book Who Will Teach for America? Michael Sharpo suggests that Asian students are raised to see a direct correlation between their academic success and their futures. Naturally, the family plays a large role in a child’s educational life, often heavily pressuring the student to succeed.
I am not suggesting that the answer to America’s educational problems would be to copy the Asian system, but I do believe that America could benefit from the observation that an intense interest, both of the parents and the children, is what inspires many Asian students.
The question becomes one of involving parents in their children’s education. Naturally, different groups of parents will place different levels of importance on their children’s education, and different children will have different educational needs.
In response to these different needs several scholars, notably Coons and Sugarman in their book Education by Choice, have suggested a voucher system wherein parents will be able to choose between a wide range of schools, public or private, regardless of location. With the voucher, system schools would compete in a “free market” for students and government dollars, and schools unable to attract students would simply disappear.
At first it seems that this system would create healthy competition, and perhaps public schools would benefit from the “prod of a good example” provided by private schools. Unfortunately, the solution is not that simple. Such competition would create a vicious cycle within the school system. Some schools would improve as the more motivated students and parents poured in while other schools would suffer from a loss of interest. This loss of interest inspires a lack of student and teacher motivation correlating directly to a drop in grades and increasingly poor consumption of resources as policies go unmonitored.
Coons and Sugarman suggest that once a school reaches this state in an educational “open market” it will simply close down. This solution is also overly simplistic. If there is a need for a school in a neighborhood, that school will have little choice but to remain open. Because schooling is mandatory, one school cannot close without offering nearby, viable alternatives. The closure of one school in a system would also put enormous pressure on the surrounding schools to absorb the displaced students.
Defenders of the voucher system often state that a system of choice gives parents certain moral options, such as choosing schools with a religious focus. This argument overlooks the fact that the American public school system was not founded to give children a moral education, it was founded to give every member of the union enough basic background to be able to participate fully in a democracy. Moral education of children, with exception to such issues as violence, is the responsibility of parents.
Another argument in defense of the voucher system is that it would empower parents of children with learning disabilities or unusually strong academic talents to find and afford more easily a school more suitable for their child’s needs. Ideally, instead of switching schools, the current school would be able to locate and fulfill a need such as an extremely talented violinist or a dyslexic child. However, school systems can only identify special needs and talents if classes are small, teachers are capable enough to notice unique problems or gifts, and parents assume an active role in their child’s learning.
The question of helping America’s public school system becomes one of generating academic interest for both parents and students. Although there are numerous and notable exceptions, interest in education seems to fall along economic lines. Too often this leads to division between the quality of education, as parents with both interest and income enact more changes in their local schools. Unfortunately, the recent rash of shootings in rural public schools has only worsened this division. Many parents with the resources to make private schools an option have placed their children in learning environments that are more sheltered than public schools. This response of removing the more interested students and parents will be detrimental for public schools, and will eventually effect all of America. As interest in private school rises the quality of public schools will necessarily fall, and a dramatic dichotomy between quality of education will be established. Only when the motivated children and parents are in classes with children who come from less fortunate backgrounds will schools be able to enact sufficient change. There will always be parents who do not emphasize the importance of a quality education. However, according to the democratic principle, their children should be able to receive the same small classes, up to date textbooks and motivated teachers as offered by private schools.
Change will not be easy to enact, and I believe it must begin at the national level. I know the suggestions of governmental discouragement of private grammar and secondary schools seem radical, but it is only the beginning of one solution. The American public education system was founded to give every citizen of America the beginnings of an education, and to enable them to make the choices necessary to support a democratic government. Today we are faced with a system of radical differences in the quality of education, and this dichotomy can only be overcome by raising the level of interest and personal responsibility in the public school system.