The Fall of Public Education
John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said “the goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.” In yesterday’s America, this statement held true. However, in today’s nation this statement is more fiction than fact. So what is it that you would find if you were to conduct an observation of most schools in our nation today? The answer: representatives boasting about the administration and the academics offered. The truth: despite all the boasting, no such things in the American educational system exist any longer.
When you ask a child what they would like to be when they “grow up” and why, the few who wish to be teachers might give a response, which results in helping people. Today, television often portrays teachers as helpful, trusting, caring, and intuitive; however, such an administrator rarely exists. Walking into a school and finding an administrator with such a passion for teaching and aiding our future as the fictional characters on the big screen is about a 5 percent chance. On the other hand, the other 95 percentile tends to not be interested in the well being of their students, much less the materials which they may or may not be learning under administrative supervision. There are few administrators who take the profession to heart and honestly devote the time they spend with their students to aiding them in the journey of finding and following the right path in life. The majority of the administration these days only show up to the classroom the number of days required, make the assignment for the day, and complain to the rest of the administration about the faults of the educational system.
Also, the curriculum offered in American schools today is far less challenging than that of other countries with the same classification scale. According to the Tennessean newspaper, our educational directors are placing in the hands of our graduates “diplomas to nowhere”. These days, an average high school diploma in our nation is 2 years inferior to that of a high school diploma in a foreign nation. There are so few adequate administrators in the educational system today that it is very common to walk into a classroom and see an assignment on the board for the class to complete, yet the teacher is sitting at his or her desk pretending to be “busy” while insubordinate behavior elevates to a rampant level far beyond control. The only thing that keeps most of these administrators in the position they hold are the perks such as paid summer vacations and various other holidays in which they get paid for staying home.
In conclusion, our educational system today no longer believes in neither upholding the promise of the advancement of knowledge, nor the dissemination of truth. By allowing the continuous increase of the lack in administration and academics, our nation is aiding in the preparation of its own dismal funeral by deviating from the structures formed by the leaders of the greater past generations.
