Americas Education System
In any part of the universe where people converge to do something as a group or society, problems will always arise. Many countries around the globe face different classes of issues on daily basis.
No country has ever avoided issues. Issues may be from whichever sector of the country at any time. Today, United States of America faces dozens of issues from several departments. In America, the greatest issue in America is education. The American education system is divided and non-uniform among people of different social classes.
Some particular groups of people enjoy and benefit more from education than particular groups of people. The American education system benefits the rich more than the people with low socio-economic status. This paper discusses several issues and factors affecting education in United States of America. The greatest issue that America is facing is the education issue. The education system in America is not equally distributed. Wolk (2011) contends that despite many legislators putting in place several policies to ensure that everybody gets education, there numerous social factors that make education levels to be uneven.
The knowledge gap is big within the American society. The rich are able to afford good schools for their children. The rich afford private schools for their children. These schools charge greater amount of fees, they have better teachers and teaching resources like books and taking the students to academic trips. Moreover, the rich are also able to provide suitable environment that promote knowledge apprehension among their children. For instance, they help their children with their assignments and encourage their children to read and write.
During family visits, the rich interact with people with high socio-economic status like them who encourage their children to work hard and perform well at school. Apart from that, the rich also stay in private homes with lesser noise and suitable environment for studying and growth of their children (Wolk, 2011). Their children are safe from drug abuse and sexual abuse unless the parents themselves commit such felonies. They also provide educative media to their children apart from hiring tutors to help their children. The rich parents also have the ability of buying all the materials that the children need at school and pay for academic trips. They pay for tuition and extra tuition for their children thus motivating the teachers who provide to the best of their ability through giving each student extra attention and helping to solve individual academic problems.
Generally, children from rich families have better the education of the children in the society. This is by fact; the law has not oppressed any group. Therefore, the children from rich families have better chances of performing at school and avoiding school dropout cases. On the other hand, children from poor families’ go to poor district school with poor teaching facilities. The rich are also enlightened about family planning and have fewer children who are manageable and they can afford their expenses without much pressure. In these schools, the teachers are demoralized and unmotivated by general infrastructure and lack of adequate finances or financial benefits.
Asa result, they are unable to deliver to the best of their abilities (Urban & Wagoner, 2008). Demoralized persons are obviously unproductive. Thus, demoralized teachers cannot deliver. These children also have poor access to reading materials. The schools lack adequate resources and fewer teachers to student ration.
The classes are crowded and teachers are unable to deliver to the students’ large numbers. The public schools also lack adequate books to meet the needs of every student. This scramble for resources denies the students ample time to study and the correct attention from their teachers in solving students personal problems. This leads to poor performance of these students from poor families. When they go back home, children lack parental support while doing their assignments. They usually live in poor neighborhoods that discourage them from participating in education.
For instance, a poor parent may lack even a simple high school certificate (Urban & Wagoner, 2008). Therefore, they are busy struggling to get basic needs and they do not have adequate time to help their children with schoolwork. These neighborhoods are also full of crimes of all types this means the parents maybe arrested and children end up dropping out of school due to lack of school fees. Similarly, once these parents end up in jails, the children struggle with looking for basic needs or the courts might put them under custody of foster parents, which demoralizes such children. In such cases, children may develop low self-esteem especially when fellow students at school mock them.
Thus, others opt to drop out of school due to such pressures. They lack sense of morality and end up seeking consolation on drugs or participating in drug business. Moreover, the students may lack food and be tempted to commit a felony like shoplifting and other petty crimes.Generally, the poor people are unfortunate enough. In some instances, when they are lucky enough to struggle and finish high school, they lack enough money to pay college fees. The earlier democrats of this country lacked adequate information about education therefore, they never included in the constitution education.
The American society also experienced some injustice where some special groups had some injustice for instance the Black Americans and the people with the Hispanic origin. Most of these groups have low quality of education and experience lower levels of education. Most of the people from these groups lead poor life and suffer from all negative effects of poverty on education. Apart from divisive education along social classes, the education system is also poor. The education system has embraced laxity and laziness.
The educational system alienated corporal punishment from the institutions but failed to reinstate and alternative and effective mode of correction that matches the system they took away. The children do not have the sense of seriousness, respect or honor to those who are older than they are. The students no longer respect their teachers. The students have assumed that schools are now the social sites where they go to interact take beer and make new girlfriends and boyfriends. They do not take their studies with any seriousness and they adorre sex more than any other thing. The mass media must have misled the society (and the students) and nobody forgot to remind them of their limits.
Modgil & Leicester (2009) believe that media content is misleading and destructive to young and inexperienced minds of all young students. The media content varies from pornographic (sexual material), drug promotion adverts to violent programmes and films that affect students ways of thinking and concentration in classes. Both state and federal governments have played very important roles in sealing the knowledge gaps in the society like the No child left behind act that ensure children from minority and poor groups in the society get education. However, this policy has failed to reduce the cases of school dropouts. The governments have also set up loans and other financial grants to aid the poor people with accessing to education.
The governments should also try to get better teachers to poor district schools and maintain them through better pay and other motivational techniques. Ravitch (2011) argue that the media and the general society including the government, private sectors and non-governmental institutions need to come together in helping these children to get better education through funding such students. These groups should also hire professional advisers that will guide and direct teachers and parents on the importance of education in the country. The parents should also encourage their children to embrace education and avoid the cases of dropping out of schools. The government should also work with media in setting up campaigns that promote importance of education in the society and suppressing other attitudes that discourage growth of education.The government also needs to redesign and strictly monitor all the influences of media on the vulnerable group (children).
Media regulation is different from denial of media freedom because the media has the social responsibility of keeping the society alive and free from harm (Modgil & Leicester, 2009). Moreover, the government needs to brighten up its education system. The government should provide effective academic system that disciplines the students and grants them the sense of priority and responsibility. To sum up, the government needs to save future generations from harm and destruction. Education plays a very important role in the society. Whether, black, white, red, Hispanic or not, rich or poor so long as they are in America.
They deserve better education and good life. Like once mentioned by President Abraham Lincoln, “the philosophy of school room in one generation will be the philosophy in the next.” The government needs to work on its education system with much care, respect, harmony and dedication because education provides the government with its decision makers, voters, workers and every other person called Americans. The government without good people is not a good government. Education is the mother of good governance, competence and superiority.
People come and go but education shall stay still to civilize all of them. Therefore, civilization is the mother of humanity and it is the role of the government to see that every citizen has quality education.
