America Skips School Analysis

All Americans want their future generations to be well educated—at least, all Americans should. When it comes to the topic of education, critics attack it by claiming that there are issues with how our American students are being taught. Some believe that education is too focused in an argumentative culture and that environment narrows our perspective, while some argue that the issue is in the commercialization of our educational system. Collectively, educational value is destroyed. Authors Benjamin Barber, Deborah Tannen, and Gregory Mantsios all agree that our educational system is flawed.

As you know, education is required and essential to the United States society. Currently in the U.S, education is becoming less appreciated by adolescents and the younger generation because they do not realize the importance of having educational opportunities. They may not

Education is the backbone to society. A society that is uneducated cannot think rationally. The education of youth guarantees our future. It is the foundation and the building block which ensures each generation will succeed when they reach adulthood. Success as a student is influenced by both internal and external forces.

America has come a long way in its education system. It is easier now, more than ever, for people of any race or gender to get an education. However, it is arguable that the educational system does not do its job to prepare students to become successful young adults. There are many flaws in the order of education, which causes students to worry more about satisfying others with test scores and academics rather than actually preparing them for the real world. While the educational system does prepare students for the academic stress of college, it does not qualify students to become young, successful adults and survive in the real world.

As an American basically we are entitled to an academic education. This aspect of being an American is frequently taken for granted. There are some countries where an education is viewed as a luxury. Growing up in this world one needs more than an academic education. One also needs the opportunity to be taught how to deal with life as a whole.

A recent study released by Pearson that questioned over 400,000 students in grades 6-12 shows that only “48% of students think their teachers care about them…and only 45% of students think teachers care if they are absent from school” (Hare, 2015). This shocking statistic demonstrates what American students think about their teachers. Most students are under the impression that their teachers don’t care about them. When teachers don’t care about their students and allow them to fail, many students with unrealized potential give up on education. Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” describes his journey through high school on the vocational track after the results of his “tests got confused with those of another student named Rose” (Rose, 1989, p. 2).

To no one’s surprise, most Americans are aware that education is a necessity in life. Not only does it allow one to further their knowledge, but it can offer freedom from anything holding them back, like poverty. A bar graph statistic from the Congressional Budget Office found that people with their Master’s degree between ages of 45-54 years old make $130,000, whereas high school graduates between the same ages only make about $70,000 (Dent). Even though America offers some of the best education in the world, many do not realize the impact that social class has on one’s education. Whereas most other nations fund their schools equally, America spends much more on the more affluent districts.

Our educational system is failing us. The United States of America is supposed to be the “greatest” country in the world but statistics are showing that our government/educational system is failing us; children/young adults of the nation. Being a student of a middle ranked school in Arizona, I personally have had a first-hand feel for how good and/or bad teaching affects students. Just in high school I have had teachers that would just assign websites as our lesson and even teachers that sit at their desk for the whole hour; don’t even go over the mindset, homework, and maybe only show one problem so that we’ll know what the homework will be like. Until sophomore year I didn’t even know the differences between you’re, your, too, and to.

A world without education would not have Great Expectations. “Around the world 59 million children of primary school age are being denied an education, and almost 65 million adolescents are without access to a secondary school,” (Doc 6). The education received throughout a childhood determines how the future will be for the new generation. Because so many people do not have an education, when they get older, it is damaging their life and the world as a whole. People are denied an education because of where they live, who they are, and how much money they have.

Mike Rose, in his excerpt from Why School?, questions the reliability of the educational system and its key focus on economic readiness. He states that schools stress the importance of economics, accountability, and compliance over previously sought over qualities like curiosity, intellect, and courage. Rose argues that education is spread mainly due to economic motivation; money motivates society more than dreams and desires. This economic focus is combined with assessments to calculate the number of students who do poorly in school and weed them out. Rose believes the economic motive merged with this assessment restricts what should be the main focus of school: development.

Did you know that the United States ranks 17th in education performance? That is a huge drop from 1980 when the United States was ranked 1st. Clearly, our education system has gone in a downward spiral and is struggling to keep up with other countries. The documentary, “Waiting for Superman” by David Guggenheim, and the article, “Idiot Nation” by Michael Moore, discuss the weaknesses in our education system. Although both authors offer compelling arguments, “Waiting for Superman” contained a better argument because of its abundance of rhetorical strategies, whereas “Idiot Nation” contained some logical fallacies.

The best escalator to opportunity in America is schooling (Wendy 2012). According to an investigation from a magazine, this escalator is broken. They expect each generation to do better, but currently, much more young Americans have less access to education, about twenty-nine percent than their parents than have more education about twenty percent, and as recently as 2000, the United States still ranked second in the share of the population with a college degree, but now they have dropped to fifth (Borosage and Vanden 2011). A basic element of the American dream is the equal access to education as the lubricant of social and economic mobility. As we know, more and more children have not taken the opportunity so far because the society they live in cannot facilitate them to achieve their essential American

Dietz(1997) argued that when a school limits parental involvement to a particular type of involvement (e.g. fundraising, committee membership) then only a small proportion of parents become involved. As a result the school neither really involves parents, nor reaps the potential benefits from involvement. Instead, a more comprehensive model of parental involvement which elicits a wide variety of parental involvement is advocated (Dauber & Epstein, 1993). Epstein and colleagues (Epstein, 1992) thus developed a typology which aimed to comprehensively categorise the variety of involvement activities in which could potentially engage. These are summarised in the table below.

Malcolm X once said “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepared for it today.” In the western world education plays a vital role in shaping our future; it determines if we will survive or fail in the world we created for ourselves. Our world is constantly changing and it requires a society that is well versed in understanding the problems deriving from cultural differences and tolerance of one another’s beliefs and perceptions. With the power of education we are able to deal with the problems of economic, government, religion and culture differences.

They are not focused on teaching us what to expect when we reach the age of adulthood, they are focused on teaching us about the subjects appointed by the Department of Education (DOE). This is the issue we face every day with the school system because although it is great to have a better understanding in these subjects, they should also focus on teaching us how to prepare for the real world. I strongly believe that they should be teaching us how to save money, how to be a better candidate for a job application, and how we are are going to need to be independent. Education should not just be about our academics or else we will never get anywhere. It should also be about how to prepare yourself for real-world problems.