American Schools Need a New System

There are many good teachers in America that are willing to go the extra mile and teach because that is their passion and what they enjoy doing but if only they were allowed, without pushing the limits of the curriculum that has been placed for them by the school system that only bases progress on statistics and test scores. Our school system should strive to elevate the minds of students by focusing on student progress with higher grading standards, and hold every school accountable for quality education instead of down grading to basic knowledge.

In Compulsory Mis-Education, Paul Goodman stated, “The aptitude and achievement testing and the fierce competition for high grades are a race up the ladder to high-salaried jobs in the businesses of the world, including the schooling business. In this race, time is literally money.” (Goodman Chap.10) Living in an ecnomy where everything is fast paced, it is no suprize that schools provide fast pace education. After all education is profitable and money is needed commodity to sustain. But what about our students? Knowledge cannot be retained when schools only value high scores “and indeed devise the tests and the curricula to pass the tests.” Not every child is an empowered learner, sometimes it is not until they have left the school that they start to recall, put into practice and appreciate what they learnt. The system should not expect to see immediate results as some of these individuals are self directed learners. As a consequence, some schools adopted poor standards as the bare minimum so that test scores could improve when in fact students were not learning much of anything. These schools purposely under-minded our students’ abilities and focused on improving the reputation of their institution rather than the progress of the students.

Teachers are the direct point of contact with students and have often taken the