United States educational reform

Schools were originally designed to provide families who could not teach their children (due to lack of education themselves or not having the time) an opportunity for their kids to learn. I don’t believe we have held true to this standard over the years, the education system has become institutionalized through government mandates and instead of providing education it is designed to generate results to increase revenue for the school districts. This can be seen by how much pressure is put on both teachers and students in regards to standardized testing. Standardized testing while not inherently harmful has in my opinion led to the downfall of the educational system. While having a national standard for proficiency in subjects such as math, science, history, and English is not a problem and should be strived for, the way that it has been implemented is the problem. Having a schools funding depend upon these tests leads to having teachers teach in a manner where students are able to regurgitate information instead of applying it. One solution I can think of is instead of having schools districts funding depend so heavily on these tests, we instead provide all schools across the country equal funding and provided extra funding in places that are struggling to meet these standards. The places that are struggling could in turn bring on extra staff and provide better resources for both teachers and students. In order to prevent schools from purposefully failing to meet the standard make the extra funding be for a limited time “you have 2 years to get up to the standard or we will have to reevaluate how the school is running”. This is a double edged sword because what stops parents from removing their students from a school as soon as it falls below the average as well as what happens in places where there are only a handful of schools to pick from. While that proposal would not fix the problem entirely it would relieve a great deal of pressure for schools to excel on the tests. If a school did not have to focus so heavily on the tests it would allow for our educators to teach more about how to apply what is being learned to the working world. For example instead of solely focusing on the algorithms used in algebra you could instead also include sections on real world applications and how it matters. To further illustrate that ideal instead of using the age old example of “Jimmy had x apples he then eat 4 and had 1 left how many apples does he have left” you could instead teach how loans work. For anyone who doesn’t fully understand how algebra and loans are related, your remaining balance on the loan is multiplied by your interest rate and that interest or “x” is added to the remaining balance. This is a real world application of algebra and it would also teach the students valuable information about loans and how they work. This can be applied in many ways, it would be particularly useful in the sciences and mathematical studies. Instead of throwing formulae at students and having them apply it through meaningless questions use the opportunity to teach them things you wish you knew whenever you got out into the workforce.

Furthermore I strongly believe that the way and at what pace the educational systems teaches students is both too slow and needlessly complex. For one as previously mentioned I truly believe that all subjects should attempt to be taught in a manner that would be applicable to real life situations. To stray away from mathematics and use another subject as an example you could use baking bread to teach science. Have students use the scientific method for choosing a recipe for bread and have them explain there hypothesis on how the bread will taste, have them use appropriate chemistry techniques to accurately measure ingredients, and then teach them about chemical and biological reactions going on during each step of the bread making process. This example could be used at all ages depending on how in detail you decide to make the explanations of the chemical reactions but would teach or reinforce the scientific method, biology, and chemistry all while being a fun hands on activity for the students to participate in with real life uses. Instead of only learning about environmental sciences have them build terrariums that mimic our biosphere. There are many ways to include hands on learning with real life ramifications in learning while I do understand that a lot of these examples would either need to be funded by the teachers or parents within the current system why don’t we instead of complaining about how impractical it would be move to making it a reality by changing how the system works. To further compound on an earlier point about how slow the current system teaches, using the aforementioned teaching methods would provide a more baseline understanding for all students to extrapolate from their experiences to understand more complex concepts. If you were using baking to teach science you could use it as an example for teaching the addition of fractions. Such as if you add 2 ½ cups of flour to a bowl how many cups would that be? Using this method could accelerate the pace at which students learn by providing a hands-on approach with fun memories to recall.

Why is the pace at which students are taught such a big deal in the first place? To answer that question I would like to ask one in return. In high school did you know what you wanted to do when you grew up? I for one did not know what I wanted to do. I believe that high school should be completely changed from the ground up but in order to accommodate that you would need to get students to a proficient level in all core subjects by the end of the 9th grade. I believe that high school should be grade 10-12 and should be completely composed of elective classes, meaning that students will pick what classes they want to take and not be forced to take any subject. This will give students 3 years to explore anything that they want to without having to decide whether to go into crippling debt in order to do that at college. I do believe that all of the core subjects should be taught at high school but in a more diverse manner splitting the subjects into their core parts such as biology, chemistry, environmental science ect. Students should be able to choose to take there’s subjects without restriction so if someone is more interested in learning about one over the other they don’t have to take any of the other classes. This probably sounds a lot like college and isn’t that what high school is supposed to imitate? By providing students an opportunity to experience many different subjects in a environment where they don’t have to worry about going into debt or have to work to pay for their classes it would allow them to gain a better understanding of who they are as a person and better understand what it is they would like to do later on in the future. (Also as an aside students should be able to take college 101 classes during senior year at the high school for free).

Submitted November 22, 2023 at 04:57AM by Feeling-Cow-5819 https://ift.tt/UbloAzI