Dissecting Education

Dissecting Education

Think about how much of your life is spent trying to learn all you can and make yourself better prepared for the “real world.'; We start schooling at age five or six. Kindergarten is about finger paints and learning the alphabet. Before we know it, we are standing in front of our class and parents accepting a high school diploma. That is thirteen years right there. Then, if we really want to “succeed'; we have to get through another 4 to 6 years of college. That is almost 20 years total in school. Are those 20 years well spent? Are we all satisfied with the education we received? The answer is “no.'; It is apparent that today’s education system in the United States is not satisfying the needs of all people.

One of the main controversies in the education system of the United States is the content of what is taught. Everything that is taught in school is uniform for the entire grade. However, not every individual student is uniform in what they already know and how capable they are of learning new things. Not only that, but also is each student interested in learning what everyone else is learning? Today there are many schools that have put more emphasis in teaching learning skills rather than the knowledge that is needed to move on to the next level (Hirsch 129). Some schools have gone to what is known as “core knowledge'; to make sure that each and every student has the same foundation upon which to build the rest of their education. They believe that through the method of “core knowledge';, everyone can benefit together (Hirsch 129). Opposite that idea is the idea that we shouldn’t be filling a child’s mind with “miscellaneous facts';, but rather be trying to extract the knowledge that is within each person’s mind (Harris). The main argument with that opinion is that without some filling, there won’t be anything to extract from a person. One positive thing that our children are learning is the ability to think creatively and be innovative. Many Americans overlook the fact that in this country, children are able to experiment with ideas and learn to believe in themselves and in their own creativity (Ho 126). But is mere creativity enough to make up for the other shortf...

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...ng a child low self-esteem, but what about those children who have excellent grades and no social lives. Don’t they have low self-esteem? Building self-esteem in students shouldn’t be a substitution for basic schooling (Moore 136). It has been argued that teachers lower their grading standards in order to raise the self-esteem of their students. Those teachers believe that a high self-esteem is necessary for a student to learn well and have a high self-esteem (Moore 136). True self-esteem does not come from a high GPA, a piece of paper called a diploma, or even a high status socially; it comes from hard work and meaningful accomplishments.

Do you want children to be filled with trivial information or encouraged to think on their own and explore their own intelligence? Do you want to receive letter grades just like you or do would you rather receive evaluations on their progress? Do you think that their self-esteem should be based on their grades or something more important? These are questions we will have to answer in new millennium and as we become new parents. The education of our children is something too important to overlook.