Bridging the Gaps John W. Gardner said, “Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.” Education today is very ineffective. It is in an in between phase of the ways of old and a time of complete reform. The main issue is that people often lose sight of why the education system should even be reformed. It shouldn’t be reformed because “that’s what everyone else is doing.” It needs to be reformed to bridge the gap for the students who have a different learning style. It should be reformed to expand knowledge for students. Education reform can have good and bad effects. Because the education system is very complex, educators are being faced with changes and they must decide what is best for students. Educators have been faced with so many changes over time. From a one room schoolhouse to three story buildings. Schools have gone from strictly religious to it being illegal for teachers to bring it up. Not even twenty years ago, many students such as farmers’ kids would drop out of school after eighth grade to work on the farm. School was enforced and college was not as highly encouraged. Now, most people go to college. Education has had many reforms. Some have happened over time and some just quickly took place, but all of them have had a huge effect on students. Through all of the changes of education, one has slowly started to take place all over the world. The education system was created with a three month break in the summer. Slowly, the idea of year round school has been planted in education. Students fear it, but should they? The idea of year round school is not what everyone thinks it is. Most year round sch... ... middle of paper ... ...earning." Project Based Learning. Web. Mar. 2012. . Quillen, Ian. "Educational Technology Rides Stimulus Funding Wave." Education Week. 09 Feb 2011: 15. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 25 Mar 2012. Sadowski, Michael. "Time and Learning." Harvard Education Letter. March/April 1998: 4-6. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 25 Mar 2012. Solomon, Gwen. "Project-Based Learning: A Primer." TechLearning (2003). Web. Mar. 2012. . Sovern, Jeff. "Laptops in Class: How Distracting Are They?." Christian Science Monitor. 06 Jun 2011: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 25 Mar 2012. Thomas, Ph.D, John W. "A Review of Research on Project-Based Learning." The Journal of Learning Sciences (2000): 367-42. Web. Mar. 2012. .
While growing up, I attended a traditional school. This is a schooling method many individuals are probably familiar with. A student attends school for nine months out of the year, and then has a three month break during the summer. However, in my immediate hometown surroundings, nearby traditional schools are assessing the idea of transforming into year-round schools. Year round schooling is one subject debated in high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools nationwide. Are schools that operate 365 days a year academically better than traditional schools? What are the cost differences between the two? How would a year-round school effect families? Changing the schooling technique from traditional to year-round has numerous variables that need to be taken into consideration before any grade school or secondary education institution fully commits. Year-round schooling schedules should not be implemented and traditional schooling calendars should be maintained.
Blumenfeld, P. C., Solloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating project‑based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational Psychologist, 26(3 & 4), 369‑398. Available October 17, 2002, from Professional Development Collection database: http://search.epnet.com
Attending a year round school will help students retain the information they are taught with greater ease due to the shortness in breaks between times they attend school. An Indianapolis fourth-grade school teacher says, “In this calendar, my goodness, (it takes) two weeks at most.”, referring to the six weeks it normally takes to review the previous year’s lesson to get the students up to speed from the summer break (Johnson). If you are to add twenty days to t...
There are many advantages to year round schooling. The two major advantages for year round schooling is the elimination or reduction in learning loss during summer breaks and improvement of student achievement. Winter, also stated other advantages such as attendance in school, reduction in drop out rate, student attitudes, and teacher attitudes. Less absenteeism by both teachers and students.The students attitudes were more positive to school and learni...
Nowadays, students are being spoon fed information in the classroom instead of actually “learning”. Teachers, who should be inspiring students to be individuals and going out to seek and learn are instead basically giving students the information just to make it easier upon themselves. Although it may be easy now, in the future when the same students that have been fed information have to go out and actually learn and find information, they won’t be able to. Students are too reliant on teachers giving them information so they won’t have to do work. Students in this generation are being complacent in a “short-cut” society and take the easy way out in everything they possibly can.
Education supports everyone getting opportunities in life and being able to choose better for themselves. As Horace Mann wrote, education is the “great equalizer for all.“ However, the United States Public School system will likely never be able to equally educate its masses of students. Public school educating all fairly is a myth.There is no one entity to blame for this failure. The failure lies with each student who has been conditioned to sit passively in an un-engaging classroom. Its failure lies in some students disrespectfully distracting their classmates and frustrating their once inspired teacher or administrator. The failure lies with administration being distracted with causes of the moment and burns out from knowing that all
Every person will have their own opinions and input on education and what is, or is not, wrong with it today. Some of these people include those who can actually make a change in the system; we have heard empty promises from senators, congressmen, and our very own presidents. We all want to improve the system for our children, siblings and for ourselves. In 1848 Horace Mann found solutions for education, but today we need more focus on foreign languages, nutrition, and personal finance classes.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the American educational system has undergone much transition in response to our changing society. Though there have been many problems raised throughout the years in regard to what our school systems should be teaching our children, there have also been many developments.
Shortly, we became more industrialized and had more advanced technology which made the summer vacation that was so crucial to the survival of the family now purposeless. With these long summer breaks, it can affect a child’s learning in so many ways. According to the benefits of year-round education article,”As of the 2006-2007 school year, nearly 2,800 U.S. schools were classified as year round.” One essential problem with long summer breaks is lack of retention of learned material and can lead to the student not being able to make progress with their learning in the next school year. In year-round schools, kids don’t waste time on review as opposed to traditional schools who take about three weeks reviewing the information they learned in the
Sadly over 40 years later, the the educational revolution still hasn't taken off. The “pieces” are still lying around unassembled and the education in the schools is still tolerated. The need for change of public schools in the United States has been emerging since of the the passage of Pennsylvania's Common School Act in 1834. The Common School Act of 1834, set up a "general” system of education by common schools. People are continuously saying how children are the future and we must nurture them in order to ensure a bright future for our country. However, we are failing at a very basic level. The current education system in the United States is extremely poor. Drop-out rates for high school students continue to rise and student performance has been steadily declining. An article published in 1999 showed exactly how much of a crisis the American education system is really in. The article was written by William J. Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education, and it ranked high school seniors form 21 industrialized nations based on their performance in math, science, and advanced physics. American high school seniors ranked 19th in math, 16th in science and last in advanced physics.
Many people for years have been saying that our school system needs to change because our world is changing, not everything is set and stone anymore. The paper also by Andrews supports this in a way. Oltermanns paper makes great points to todays world, like how “Nothing motivates students more than when they discover the meaning behind a subject of their own accord,” because I today's society, we are scolded if we do not get good grades, and understand exactly how and what the professor is teaching. But in this form of teaching, Rasfeld ideas could spread everywhere. There is great success backing up his ways for the adults of the future. “In education, you can only create change from the bottom – if the orders come from the top, schools will resist. Ministries are like giant oil tankers: it takes a long time to turn them around. What we need is lots of little speedboats to show you can do things differently.”
According to Lashway (1999) educators once saw educational reform as cyclical. Every ten years or so one could expect a public outburst followed by frantic efforts to mend a broken system. However, in the last twenty years there seems to have been a perpetual reform.
In 1916, education reformer John Dewey (1997) wrote, “education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active and constructive process” (p. 38). Project-based learning, then, is the embodiment of Dewey’s educational sagacity. Project-based learning is a dynamic, multi-faceted teaching method and learning approach in which students actively engage with a given topic or idea by means of questioning, research, hands-on activities, and real-world scenarios. Project-based learning casts aside the confines of the traditional lecture-based classroom, replacing an arguably outdated model of instruction with the promotion of higher-level thinking. Project-based learning not only engages students, but encourages learning in a contemporary context, as students meet challenges head-on, actively relate acquired knowledge to the world in which they live, and become responsible for their own learning.
Hirsch, Jim. "Learning Collaboratively With Technology." School Administrator 1 Aug. 2005: 10. eLibrary. Web. 6 July 2011.
Going to school and getting a great education is important for a successful future in today’s world. Years ago, many children did not go to school and many young adults opted to work instead of attending college. In today’s society, gaining a high level of education is almost always mandatory for many jobs. There are many changes being done to the education system along with new items and ways of teaching in the classroom. There is a growing amount of changes in the classroom such as technology, teaching time, teaching styles, and freedom of space.