Good Enough Is Not Good Enough

Good Enough is Not Good Enough

The American secondary school system is not good enough anymore. A lack of focus has turned out students with neither the skill nor the ambition to compete in the current job market. Leaders and educators need to examine the problems in the current system and correct them before it’s too late. By looking at vocational and alternative schools, which currently turn out graduates ready to compete, they can remodel the current curriculum in order to meet the global occupational demands of the 21st century.

How can the richest nation on earth lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to education? We are already outsourcing many of our technology sector jobs to foreign countries. Asia and Mexico have virtually taken over our manufacturing jobs. Manual labor jobs are going to immigrants who happily take on the work that Americans don’t want to do. If things don’t change, how will this generation of high school graduates compete for jobs in a global economy? An education is essential.

Many of the current problems can be traced to the dumbing down of educational standards. “Virtually everyone has heard how poorly American students perform, weather compared to foreign students or students of a generation ago” (Sowell p.1). A study of American and Korean high school students showed that while both groups were close in scores on standardized tests, the Korean students far surpassed the Americans when it came to critical thinking (Sowell).

Most people will agree that the American school system doesn’t do a good job. Year after year American students fall behind the students of other industrial countries. It has become a national joke that a high percentage of high school kids can’t find the United States on a map of the world. Blame is placed on the overcrowded classroom, ineffective teachers and under funded schools. But these are not the root cause of the problems. Even if the problems were corrected, the schools would still fail to perform. According to John Gatto, in his book, The Underground History of American Education, they fail because they were designed to. “The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn, and it isn’t supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn’t made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs (Gatto p. 34).” He goes on to show that the work taught is classrooms fails teach students how to solve real problems they will encounter in life. (Gatto).

America can no longer ignore the need to change the way we educate our students. Once the jobs have all gone overseas, it will be too late. Thirty years ago, Alvin Toffler predicted the demise of the standard, cookie-cutter model for schools in his book, Future Shock. He warned that if the schools did not change to meet the changing world, than outside influences would act to make those changes. The advances in technology of today’s world require a workforce that is creative and diverse, not more of the same mass-produced students.

“In three short decades between now and the twenty-first century, millions of ordinary, psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future. Citizens of the world’s richest and most technologically advanced nations, many of them will find it increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterizes our time. For them the future will have arrived too soon (Toffler p 9),”

One of the main problems that need to be addressed is that school are designed and run on the premise that all students are the same. Not every fourteen or fifteen year old is at the same level of competence. Nor do they think in the same way. Some students are very creative and do not do well in standardized testing. While others, test very well but they are just responding to a set of memorized facts that do not reflect how well they can apply the information to a life situation. A well-rounded education might be the norm, but that doesn’t always mean it is the best way to prepare an individual for life. High school students who excel in math and sciences should not have to wait until college to focus on their majors. However, teachers are forced to prepare their students for standardized test that are suppose to measure how well the academic program is working. Teachers should instead be focusing on the strengths and weakness of the student individually, not the group as a whole.

“Each student is an individual. Each teacher is an individual. Both should be treated like individuals, with whatever amount of respect they deserve, rather than as cattle in enormous herds. You might as well take their names away now and just get them numbers, because the education system is essentially telling them that they have little importance as individuals, and they better behave like the rest of the herd if they want to avoid being in trouble. Is this the way young people should be "controlled"? I hope not. Such authoritarian and bureaucratic structures and attitudes diminish whatever creativity and zest everyone brings to the table (Johnson).”

Something new is rising in the field of education. They are called charter schools. The idea has been met with skepticism among some educators but there is no denying they have been effective. “A little known movement within public school systems, the creation of alternative schools for at-risk students has been in existence for several years. Alternative high schools have grown nationally in both quality and number. These schools for both existing and potential dropouts rely heavily on forming learning communities where both teacher and learner are empowered (Knutson).”

If the schools can work for the at-risk students, then they have an even higher chance of working for gifted and creative thinkers. When a teenager is encouraged to think outside the box, the results can be astounding. Charter schools are opening in several states but they need more money and support. “A recent legislative report indicated that some (schools) are having problems with financial stability and the ability to maintain the school structure with the few personnel they can afford (Richardson).” Most of the population who vote in local elections don’t always see the larger picture when asked to pay more tax money for education. The system of education was good enough for them. They see no need to change now. Good