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Merits and demerits of the American educational system
Advantages of the US education system
Essay on americas education system
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The Advantages of American Educational System
Parents and the older generation Americans always complain about the educational system of the country. They assert that their children's knowledge and skills are below average as compared to their counterparts in other countries. The American educational system is not inferior to other systems in any other way. Instead, it is just teaching some other factors that are considered more significant than simply basic knowledge and skills. The American educational system tries to develop freedom and creativity among its students.
From an American point of view, only in this way can the students contribute maximally to the future society.
Freedom is the trademark of America. Americans are admired by people in other countries because they have the freedom to do whatever they wish without worrying about the negative consequences. Therefore, the American educational system must be in congruence with this trademark. According to this system, children can learn effectively only when they are allowed to explore freely with their ideas, "without this they will not really be able to think or believe in themselves" . When children are forced to memorize some materials, they will remember the materials for a few days. However, they would have forgotten everything after a summer vacation. On the other hand, when children are allowed to think of their own ways of learning the concepts, they will tend to
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They will all learn how to do these things eventually, but for now I am happy to be able to teach them. It is my hope that they will learn from example. I do not know how to show them everything, but hopefully by allowing them to read some of these manuscripts that we found upon first arriving here. They helped me to learn much.
From infancy to adulthood, organisms are always learning. The conscious and the subconscious are taking in information and sorting it, discarding irrelevant information and storing the relevant. The most common mode of gaining knowledge is through repetitions and memorization. These methods are effective for knowing exact definitions but do not develop understanding. In O Americano Outra Vez, Richard Feynman describes his teaching experiences while at the Brazilian Center for Physical Research. There he discovers the flaw in the modern education system, students are memorizing material but are unable to apply it to a real life scenarios, demonstrating they are gaining knowledge but not understanding it. Similar to Feynman’s Brazilian class,
In today’s society, we would describe high school as a four-year passageway into adulthood [college]. Ever since our current education system was implemented, high school would begin at the 9th grade level, and end at the 12th grade level. With the average age for 9th graders to be at 14 transitioning to 15 and for 12th graders to average in at 17 transitioning to 18; this have been the norm, for the American society for ages. In Leon Botstein’s “Let Teenagers Try Adulthood,” he writes an opinionated piece on how the current American education system is obsolete; plaguing the current youth by preventing their way into adulthood and isolating them from their experiences of it. From my experiences as a Junior in high school, I do have to disagree with Botstein’s statement that the current American high school is obsolete. Age and maturity would not, and should not be the main cause of the American high school system to go obsolete. Adulthood is not based by age, it is by the students’ own mentality; for some students, being a “late bloomer” would not be in their favor if the proposed solution by Botstein would have taken place. Using the Littleton [Columbine High School] shootings as a way to support his argument, is inconsequential. In no means I’m saying the current American high school system is the definition of perfection. The system is flawed, unsound, and imperfect, but for other reasons
Marx disagree with the functionalist view that people in power are not there because of superior traits; but more of an ideology that the elite use to justify their being at the top and seduce the oppressed into believing that their welfare depends on keeping quiet and following authorities. (2012:230) Marx saw four possible ways to distribute wealth: each person’s needs, what each person wants, what each person earns, and what each person can take. From Marx view there were two economically based social classes: the bourgeoisie are the capitalist class and the proletariats are the working class. The bourgeoisie are the haves, they control the means of production, norms and values of society. They use their social control to maintain their control in society and use their power to make distribution of resources seem fair. The proletariats will remain exploited if they do not develop a class consciousness. If the proletariats are to develop a class consciousness they will be able to overthrow the bourgeoisie. People who has more power will have more resources comparing to people who has no power will have less resources. The elite class has more power and money which allow them to have any resource they need or want like education, job, food, etc… The lower class will not have the same resources like the elite class, some drop out of high school to work to provide for their food, housing, and clothing for their
Something I have always known since I was a little kid is that the educational system in this country is a complete fraud. American schools claim to live by the ideal of No Child Left Behind, but millions of students get cast aside each and every year. In schools these days, it is obvious which students are the elite—those that are raised up and motivated to go to college—and the ordinary student— those that are somewhat ignored throughout their schooling and are lucky if they even earn a GED. As a recent graduate of high school, and a product of this country’s educational system, I have had the opportunity to develop my own opinions regarding the myth of education in our society. Based upon my observations going through the school system, and the various arguments posed by several authors in “Rereading America”, I strongly believe that schooling in this society caters solely to students in the elite category while ostracizing students that do not live up to the elitist ideal.
Marxism is a method of analysis based around the concepts developed by the two German philosophers Karl Marx and Fredrich Engel, centered around the complexities of social-relations and a class-based society. Together, they collaborated their theories to produce such works as The German Ideology (1846) and The Communist Manifesto (1848), and developed the terms ‘’proletariat’ and ’bourgeois’ to describe the working-class and the wealthy, segmenting the difference between their respective social classes. As a result of the apparent differences, Marxism states that proletariats and bourgeoisie are in constant class struggle, working against each other to amount in a gain for themselves.
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.
One of the ideas that I have learned is that all students learn in different ways and teachers need to teach to their needs. This is described with an analogy in Finding Freedom. The analogy used is, “ . . . anyone would laugh themselves silly at the thought that children with different body sizes ought to be made to wear the same size clothes . . .” (Hinchey, 67). We would laugh if someone said all children should wear the same size clothing, yet teachers are still teaching students all in the same way. Some students learn from lecturing and memorizing, whereas others learn from examples and trial and error. Finding Freedom states that teachers need to modify work for students so that they can learn the material (Hinchey, 11). Delpit also states, “Some of the [black students] even learned how to read, but none of them as quickly as my white students. I was doing the same thing for all of my kids--what was the problem?” (Delpit, 13). Before reading these two statements as well as others and discussing them in class I thought that almost all students learned in the same way. I thought this because I learned from lecturing, memorizing, and a few examples. I figured that if I could learn in that way and most of my peers learned in that way then most students could.
Julian Nava was one of the people who fought to end IQ testing. He believed that students that did not get high IQ scores still had the potential to be something greater than a factory worker.
Marxism is based on the political, economic and social theories of Karl Marx. His belief that the social class struggle had a major impact in history and that society should move towards a system where there are no classes. Marx believed that people are free, creative beings who have the potential to transform the world. He criticized the free market as being unregulated. Marx maintained that the market economy is coordinated through spontaneous purchase dictated by supply and demand. This blocked society’s ability to take control over both individual and collective destinies. He condemned capitalism as a system that alienates the masses. He reasoned that the market forces, not workers, control things. People are required to work for bosses (capitalists) who have full control over all decisions. The workplace, he said, becomes monotonous, humiliating, and suitable for machines rather than for free, creative people. In the end, the workers themselves become objects and make decisions based on profit-and-loss considerations with no concern for human worth and need. Marx concluded that capitalism blocks our capacity to create a humane society. In order to move society forward workers must reject and advance a market-based society and replace it with a democratic planned society. This is inevitable to advance society through history. Class consciousness is the awareness that a social class possesses and its capacity to rationally act for their best interest. Class consciousness is required before they can effect a successful revolution.
Class is a set of concepts in the society about who is who and who gets to have say and who does not. They are usually divided into upper, middle, and lower classes. I grew up in a country where class was distinct. Class prevailed in every part of the society. Rich children did not serve punishments in school while the rest of us did. Rich children could afford to wear new uniforms while the rest of us wore old unfirms that were torn. Rich children ate well at the cafeteria while the rest of us ate once and ate local made food that was not healthy called akara and boli. The rich children could afford to go to school parties and wear the nicest clothes while the rest of us could not. Rich children could get to be privileged while the rest of
When they finally begin to learn they would experience a whole new feeling of adrenaline and excitement.
people reach the state of free thinking. They help people break free from the illusion that what
In order to understand and gain knowledge, learning theories stress the importance of creating a relationship between all pieces of information, the learner, and the environment. It is the responsibility of both the teacher and the learner to link the appropriate information together. If students can develop a relationship for the "underlying reasons for ‘how’ and ‘why’ to use specific procedures, they will be able to store this information as part of their knowledge network," and develop links with other pieces of information (Gersten and Baker, 1998, p.24). On the contrary, if learners learn facts of information that are isolated from a meaningful context, their understanding is often incomplete and meaningless. As a result of these linked relationships between individuals and environments, knowledge is the prevailing outcome. In summary, "knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989, p.32).
Karl Marx analyzed class relations and social conflict using materialist interpretation of historical development and eventually creating a communist class, in hope of providing everyone with the same necessities. Marx argued that the capitalist bourgeoisie mercilessly exploited the proletariat class. He realized that the performance carried out by the proletariats created considerable abundance for the capitalist. Marxism focuses on exterminating the bourgeoisie and supplying the people with balanced amounts of funds ultimately creating the proletariat class efficient for everyone.