Education in Our Nation
It's about that time of year here int eh states, when K-12 students start heading back to school. I personally have long thought that the variance in the exact time of year was always quite odd. Primarily in the south is where schools start in early - mid August. The northeast waits until after Labor Day in September. At any rate, I think this is an appropriate time to share some thoughts on the state of the education system here in the U.S.
During my undergraduate course years ago I did an extensive research paper on the U.S education system in relation to several others around the world. In that paper I focused on the prevailing theories of how to improve the US system based on the perception of aspects deemed desirable from other nations such as Japan, India, and a few European nations. I will focus on four of the areas of reform I covered in that paper.
First is perception. Namely, there is a perception that the U.S system is somehow on the verge of collapse or that our youth today are barely managing to learn anything. This is, of course, a grandiose exaggeration. To be certain educational gains in the U.S are not what would be deemed ideal, and there is certainly much more work to do. Nevertheless, it is also true that part of the problem is that we treat the problem as though there is a devastating crisis about to dawn on our students. This type of overreaction leads to hastily formulated strategies that can do more to make the problem worse than make it better. Case in point is the way in which education policy has been in such flux constantly over the last ten to fifteen years. It makes it difficult to understand what is working and what is not when you only leave a given policy in place briefly before turning it over again (which I suppose is somewhat better than the common tact with government policy which is to leave it in place until someone complains enough or it's time to cut money for the budget).Changes must be made, and those changes should be carefully thought out and implemented in full measure, not hasty reactions to fears the sky is falling.
Second is time for policy and time in school. As I said before, time must be given for policy to work. There has been a rather knee-jerk reaction if a policy doesn't show results in its very first year or so. Here is the problem; education is a lifelong, continual, building thing. It takes time to learn to do something, and time to learn to do something a different way. Fifth grade sounds like an early part of a person's life and an early stage in education, but by that point a child has amassed at least four years of educational process and experience. It will take some time for an up and coming fourth grader to learn something new for fifth grade. To test them on that a year later and deem that significant improvements are insufficient is greatly jumping the gun.
Third, is testing. There has been a lot of consternation about the merits of standardized testing, about whether it is necessary and so forth. Testing is necessary. It is the most reliable means available for judging comprehension of taught subject matter. However, there is good testing and bad testing. Tests that rely mainly on asking the test taker to regurgitate memorized facts are not very useful at measuring anything but memorization skill. While memorization is important, if that is all you're targeting, it does nothing for one's ability to comprehensively tackle subjects. It doesn't do anything for generating critical thinking skills.
Furthermore, over-emphasis on tests, particularly by teachers, leads to teaching to the test alone. It leads to classes entirely focusing on how to past a single test. Rather than teaching the subject such as math or reading, the class becomes entirely focused on teaching tricks to guess at the right answer, like knowing which multiple choice answer is most likely to come up, or how reading comprehension problems are generally structured so you can just look for the answer, instead of teaching the students how they are supposed to solve these problems directly.
Finally is issue of balanced education. This matter tends to get swept into debates about federalism - states rights versus federal powers. When it comes to education, the states ultimately have the right to set education policy as they see fit. The federal government can set some broader guidelines, and offer financing as a carrot to get the states to sign on to the plan, but it is ultimately the choice of the states to determine how to setup their education system, and often times the states further delegate down to the counties, cities, or school districts. This allows for diversity and experimentation at forming a comprehensive system that works. But it also creates great fragmentation and unnecessary disruption. I can personally attest to the fact that upon moving from one state to another between middle school and high school I spent a lot of time in high school going through classes that were teaching the same things I'd learned back in middle school. There needs to be more effort at parity across the states, so that a student moving from one state to another, or sometimes even from one city to another, is not put in a position where they are either further ahead, or worse yet further behind, than where they left off.
There are a lot more areas that need addressing, such as the role of families, the cost of education, training of teachers, and so on. I will leave my thoughts on those areas for another time.
That's it for today. Check back here, or FanFiction.net later today for the next two chapters (around 1:30 PM EST). I have something a little special planned for next week as well. I leave you with today's sample track. I don't know, I guess I've been in a J-pop/anime music sort of feeling this week.
During my undergraduate course years ago I did an extensive research paper on the U.S education system in relation to several others around the world. In that paper I focused on the prevailing theories of how to improve the US system based on the perception of aspects deemed desirable from other nations such as Japan, India, and a few European nations. I will focus on four of the areas of reform I covered in that paper.
First is perception. Namely, there is a perception that the U.S system is somehow on the verge of collapse or that our youth today are barely managing to learn anything. This is, of course, a grandiose exaggeration. To be certain educational gains in the U.S are not what would be deemed ideal, and there is certainly much more work to do. Nevertheless, it is also true that part of the problem is that we treat the problem as though there is a devastating crisis about to dawn on our students. This type of overreaction leads to hastily formulated strategies that can do more to make the problem worse than make it better. Case in point is the way in which education policy has been in such flux constantly over the last ten to fifteen years. It makes it difficult to understand what is working and what is not when you only leave a given policy in place briefly before turning it over again (which I suppose is somewhat better than the common tact with government policy which is to leave it in place until someone complains enough or it's time to cut money for the budget).Changes must be made, and those changes should be carefully thought out and implemented in full measure, not hasty reactions to fears the sky is falling.
Second is time for policy and time in school. As I said before, time must be given for policy to work. There has been a rather knee-jerk reaction if a policy doesn't show results in its very first year or so. Here is the problem; education is a lifelong, continual, building thing. It takes time to learn to do something, and time to learn to do something a different way. Fifth grade sounds like an early part of a person's life and an early stage in education, but by that point a child has amassed at least four years of educational process and experience. It will take some time for an up and coming fourth grader to learn something new for fifth grade. To test them on that a year later and deem that significant improvements are insufficient is greatly jumping the gun.
Third, is testing. There has been a lot of consternation about the merits of standardized testing, about whether it is necessary and so forth. Testing is necessary. It is the most reliable means available for judging comprehension of taught subject matter. However, there is good testing and bad testing. Tests that rely mainly on asking the test taker to regurgitate memorized facts are not very useful at measuring anything but memorization skill. While memorization is important, if that is all you're targeting, it does nothing for one's ability to comprehensively tackle subjects. It doesn't do anything for generating critical thinking skills.
Furthermore, over-emphasis on tests, particularly by teachers, leads to teaching to the test alone. It leads to classes entirely focusing on how to past a single test. Rather than teaching the subject such as math or reading, the class becomes entirely focused on teaching tricks to guess at the right answer, like knowing which multiple choice answer is most likely to come up, or how reading comprehension problems are generally structured so you can just look for the answer, instead of teaching the students how they are supposed to solve these problems directly.
Finally is issue of balanced education. This matter tends to get swept into debates about federalism - states rights versus federal powers. When it comes to education, the states ultimately have the right to set education policy as they see fit. The federal government can set some broader guidelines, and offer financing as a carrot to get the states to sign on to the plan, but it is ultimately the choice of the states to determine how to setup their education system, and often times the states further delegate down to the counties, cities, or school districts. This allows for diversity and experimentation at forming a comprehensive system that works. But it also creates great fragmentation and unnecessary disruption. I can personally attest to the fact that upon moving from one state to another between middle school and high school I spent a lot of time in high school going through classes that were teaching the same things I'd learned back in middle school. There needs to be more effort at parity across the states, so that a student moving from one state to another, or sometimes even from one city to another, is not put in a position where they are either further ahead, or worse yet further behind, than where they left off.
There are a lot more areas that need addressing, such as the role of families, the cost of education, training of teachers, and so on. I will leave my thoughts on those areas for another time.
That's it for today. Check back here, or FanFiction.net later today for the next two chapters (around 1:30 PM EST). I have something a little special planned for next week as well. I leave you with today's sample track. I don't know, I guess I've been in a J-pop/anime music sort of feeling this week.
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