18 REASONS THE U.S. EDUCATION SYSTEM IS FAILING

Discussion in 'Education' started by LafayetteBis, May 10, 2021.

  1. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The above title from here: 18 REASONS THE U.S. EDUCATION SYSTEM IS FAILING

    Excerpt:

    Where there's a common will there is also a way.

    America does not yet have that common-will for National Education. And in this brave-new-world of Services Industry jobs that will sustain the economy it is key to a national solution for all ...
     
  2. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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    National Education? Public school IS national education. I don't know about a way to fix it, because anything you learn will be obsolete in a matter of months or a few short years. Change is happening quickly.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2021
  3. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Only in your dreams. Primary and secondary schooling are all locally funded (for the most part). Public post-secondary education is partly-funded by the state. But it's cost for private post-secondary schooling is often four or five times the annual cost of a state-institution-of-higher-learning! (That is, it is unavailable to a very large section of the poorer American people!)

    These are the people that need most low-cost state-sponsored post-secondary education in order to make-their-way out of poverty and into a middle-class (or better) existence!

    Not so!

    The foundation of any post-secondary schooling is very wide - and across the enormous length-and-breath of human-knowledge. And nowadays, if one thinks they got it "wrong" the first time around, they can go back for another field-of-instruction!

    The availability is only a matter of COST. And no tertiary-level education should cost 20 to 30-thousand dollars per year* ... !

    *Thus causing some people to live their first 5-to10 years paying off post-secondary educational debt! Which aint no way to educate people into a decent existence!
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2021
  4. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Education is one of the most elementary block of a nation, unfortunately it's often more and more neglected by short sighted politicians.

    I suppose there is clearly a lack of ambition there.
     
  5. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The lack of a proper-education and "shortsighted politicians" go hand-in-hand in Uncle Sam's place ...

    PS: If the European Union does anything right&correctly, it is to assure that Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Education are all NATIONALIZED. The first-two are of course obligatory in most countries. But the fact about the European Union that is most important is this: Post-secondary Education is nearly free, gratis and for nothing (its annual tuition in France is about 1400€).
    PPS: There is also the element of availability. There is more than ample Trade-Education programs for those not wanting a Post-graduate Education. They are also free, gratis and for nothing. (Of course, the same may very well indeed exist in the US.)
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2021
  6. VotreAltesse

    VotreAltesse Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    @LafayetteBis I have family members in the Education Nationale, it's not something proper to USA.

    In France, we tend to focus extensively on late education, out of favor with the sooner one.
    The education that happen between 5 to 15 YO seems by far the most important one. Manual labours or works requiring short training are often ill considered, which is I think is short sighted too.

    Post secondary education tend sometimes to create "educated idiot". Montaigne considered that a well made head was more important that a full head and I agree with him, even if obviously you need a minimum of intellectual matter to make a well made head.

    So I'm not in line with people who want more credits for universities as right now primary schools and care for elders seems more important to me (even if care of elders belong to another debate).
     
  7. expatpanama

    expatpanama Active Member

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    This is hogwash.

    Liberals love to attack American education so they can get more money for it. Conservatives love to attack American education so they can retaliate against academia. They're both sadly wrong as American education is the best in the world. Sure there are pockets internationally where students do better in rigid monolithic societies, while the U.S. is pluralistic and brings out the best of all. Out of all the world's nations America has the highest percentage of kids going on to college and America's universities are the world's finest.

    Stop. Take a deep breath. Folks come the the U.S from all over the world for an American university degree. What other country can say that?
     
  8. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Your comment is quite correct. But in the context of a debate-forum in the US I try to underscore what the danger is to Americans. (Not that that helps! Far too many Yanks think the US is the center-of-the-universe.)

    Our life span in France in 2021 is 82.86 years, a 0.16% increase from 2020. The current lifespan in the US is 77 for men and 81 for women.

    The factual evidence speaks for itself ...
     
  9. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    #19...There is no federal comprehensive education curriculum mandated to all US states. Each state can ignore history, they can alter history, or just lie about history. Each state can decide if science is real or fake? Each state can place religion over education?

    IMO this is a recipe for failure...
     
  10. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    HISTORY LESSON

    OH, enough of the BS! The particularities of "each state" are far less general than you intimate above.

    BUT, they are often highly-particular and related to a "select group" of individuals. And how does that happen?

    Reelect Donald Trump and he'll show us all how he did it by lowering upper-income taxation. Which he would have done to a far greater percentage than he did - except that the country's debt would have exploded in his face!

    And he had at the time (that he lowered upper-income taxation) an upcoming presidential-election for which he needed funding ... !
     
    Last edited: Jun 2, 2021
  11. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    You say 'enough BS' then you add total BS and don't wish to discuss facts. No wonder no one is responding to your OP...
     
  12. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    I think one of the missing points is the irony. We say we value education, but we don't value the educators. Want people to value education? Then you have to convince people that you care about teachers. How do you do that?
     
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  13. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    I think it's more about the government and citizens not having control over the public education system. Months ago I checked the DofEd website looking for a mission statement...a concise statement about the goals of public education. I found nothing! Someone said if you don't know where you want to go it is unlikely you can ever get there. And I suggest the government and citizenry are scared shitless to make solid goals because those goals will FORCE public involvement and funding. For example, what if the mission statement said '95% of all kids will graduate from high school'? What monumental effort would be required to achieve this? So we just provide a sub-par education system and let the cards fall wherever they fall...and many kids fall with them! I don't think it's about teachers but about the entire education program and everyone involved. Lastly, for all the so-called Americans who refuse to support a solid public education system, and those who refuse science and rewrite history, this is your root problem...
     
  14. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    I mean I think your point is valid, but on the other hand site search commands are pretty easy to use.
    "Education is primarily a State and local responsibility in the United States. It is States and communities, as well as public and private organizations of all kinds, that establish schools and colleges, develop curricula, and determine requirements for enrollment and graduation. The structure of education finance in America reflects this predominant State and local role. Of an estimated $1.15 trillion being spent nationwide on education at all levels for school year 2012-2013, a substantial majority will come from State, local, and private sources. This is especially true at the elementary and secondary level, where about 92 percent of the funds will come from non-Federal sources."
    https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html

    But I get exactly what you're saying. The government might not even know what it's policy is. It doesn't know what it's doing really, and there's no long term goals.
     
  15. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    As long as you have states who refuse science, who refuse facts and truth, who will rewrite history, who will ignore history, who place religion above everything, how can this lead to an effective public education system? The states can administer education but the education policy and requirements must come from the federal government. How is this fair to kids who have no choice where they are born or live?
     
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  16. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    To value educators, they need to be valuable. My college experience was that Education majors were people who dropped out and couldn't hack other programs, and the Education college had the lowest standards and easiest requirements at the University. That doesn't give me faith that we're getting a quality product.
     
  17. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    SECONDARY-SCHOOLING EDUCATIONAL ENHANCEMENT

    I quite agree! The states - most of them (given the evidence of tested intellectual-acuity of today's children) are not "doing their job".

    Because there is insufficient oversight of the length-and-breadth of the total educational-process across the US. The US would be better off subsidizing post-secondary schooling than the DoD!

    Nobody is responsible for the country's intellectual attainment in learning! Not even the PotUS! Which is why I suggest that we take the money we are wasting on the DoD (see here Uncle Sam's Discretionary Spending) and put it to better use by enhancing educational-standards in America as a whole! That is, in enhancing the Intellectual Attainment level of first secondary school students and secondly post-secondary school students.

    America's Educational Achievement is the consequence of three key factors:
    *Intellectually luring students to continue their schooling at the post-secondary level, and
    *Having them obtain the competence to pursue a career in the Services Industries with salaried-compensation at a higher level of intellectual attainment.
    *Both of the above are simple questions of "Who pays what for what?" The answer being Federal government-support for both (where necessary) state-secondary schooling and post-secondary educational programs across the country.

    The problem (of sufficiently obtained skill-levels) is a matter of education in this Brave New World where the Services Industries (that employ today more than 80% of the population) require a higher-level educational attainment.

    The above will necessitate that we understand the need to lower the cost of an Educational Degree in its entire range (from Talent Training to Two- and Four-year and even further advanced degree-levels).

    MY POINT?

    If conducted appropriately the expense of enhancing much lower-cost post-secondary education nationally will be compensated by the taxation-level obtained from the higher-paying jobs that the economy will create. The lower-cost tuition fees at state-schools (if subsidized by the US government) will attract more students who - given their family income-level - will be more able to assume the cost if it is sufficiently low!

    In Europe today, here are four examples of tuition fees (from the website here):
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2021
  18. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    I suspect if the nation truly desired to make their education program world-class, this would require a minimum of ten years simply to update facilities and further educate/train teaching personnel. IMO our current personnel are not qualified to go to the next level so lots of purging and training will be required. Further, to do this will cost zillions of dollars, which many/most so-called Americans won't approve. I can understand where and how improvement is necessary but I don't think Americans have the stomach to support such a venture...
     
  19. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    Most of these reasons are good, sound reasons. But I do have issues with some.

    #9 says: "They need alternative suggestions on living a life that rises above their current circumstances. For a young person to truly have a shot at an honest life, he or she has to believe in the value of an education and its impact on good citizenship. That belief system has to come from direct conversations about making smart choices with trusted adults and peers."

    I've had many conversations with students in those situations. The statement seems naïve or not based on experience. It's not that these students are unaware of some value of education or that they can rise above their current situation. It's more that they see an easier way to do things. Granted, their way usually puts them in prison and frequently ends life far sooner than the accepted way, but we're dealing with adolescent minds and ten years, or even just five years into the future is an eternity for them. Delayed gratification is a concept not well accepted by so many young people.

    One big problem in such cases is that the parents and grandparents might agree that education is the way to improve, but they tend to see education as basically just showing up for class and doing assignments just to say they got done. They place little emphasis on the process of education, overlooking the need for actual learning and focusing mostly on rote memory to get past the test. They see little of value in a lot of the required classes. Too often the family does not really grasp how developing an intellect is important.

    There is also a problem in how we grade students. In this state, it's pretty much taboo to give a failing grade to students before they get to high school. What they learn is that they don't actually have to do anything and they will still go on to the next grade. They bring this attitude to the high school, along with a lack of learning. I'm not in favor of punishing students for their grades, but they must be accountable. If they have not met the basic requirements for Science, Math, etc., what good is passing them along going to do? Grading should reflect levels of achievement.

    #13 ties into some of this as well. The idea of cheating to get your through the day points to a failure to understand the importance of actually learning things. And as much as I hate to say it, technology has given a green light to cheating, both in and out of the classroom. The tech staff at schools gets busy trying to block all the sights that prevent learning, but the students are way ahead of the staff in finding ways around filters. A better approach would be to have a completely separate internet for education that is not linked to or able to link with the internet we have now. Sometimes, keeping kids in the classroom (figuratively speaking) is way more effective.


    I've thought often about how Education in general is failing. Anything that's required is going to meet some resistance. Not that we should make it voluntary, but we should change our approach for how we encourage all students to accept the need for education. If all we're doing is saying you need to do your time in school so you'll be a prepared employee, we really aren't being effective. A lot of the dropouts I knew were actually quite intelligent, but very uninterested in what we were doing. Example--one of my students had a strong passion for history, but was failing in his classes. His passion did not include the cut and dried curriculum and it's multiple choice grading system. He wanted to choose the history he learned about and to share his thoughts about it. He was quite articulate and could have learned so much more if he had been allowed to continue that path. He was a student of history, but in an un-standardized way. This has led me to wonder if our system needs to take a different approach from the ground up.

    Generally speaking, we have a one-size-fits-all system that is highly bureaucratized. The layers of the bureaucracy rely on statistics to judge the effectiveness of those in the layers below. We rely on standardized testing to judge the teacher. Those stats not only hold teachers accountable, but members of the different administrative departments in school districts. The administrations do teacher observations that rely mostly on checkboxes and measure how well teachers follow certain teaching strategies that are ever-changing and trendy. They get judged by what's hanging on the walls, and what's not. There is little room for individuality. You either teach this way or you leave the field.

    The old concept of differentiated instruction comes from the idea that humans do not all learn in the same way. But the idea of a 'Standardized Bureaucracy of Education' essentially leads us to the idea that there is only one way to do things and the Government is going to set the standards.

    My thought is to step back and re-think. Let teachers teach what they are most passionate about and in the way they do best. Let students have a voice in which classes they must take, and let there be a venue for things they'd like to learn explore. A teacher who is not a visual learner is going to struggle with trying to teach students who are visual learners, so students should be able to choose a teacher that better understands how they learn. Make it more like a broad chance to explore the world rather than mundane path to employment. Don't exclude STEM, but don't force all students to focus on that. Let's have variety and choice. Make more time for grade schoolers to have recess. Let the rest have some down time at different times of the day. Let the curriculum be decided at the local level. Let them decide to have college level classes for the high achievers and not force all into one class level. Make it so young people want to learn. /rant
     
  20. cristiansoldier

    cristiansoldier Well-Known Member

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    Based on that list of 18 items, why is US education system failing now? Most of those problems are not new and many have been around for decades or more.
     
  21. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

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    In bold above, you are okay with the states who decide science is a joke, who rewrite and lie about history, who place a certain religion above education? How can this be fair to kids who have no choice where they were born or live? I heard on the news last week that 35 states don't allow teaching about the Holocaust? How many states refuse to teach about January 6, 2021? The states are too stupid to have the responsibility for education...
     
  22. Kranes56

    Kranes56 Banned

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    You can't. It's impossible to. We have to work with that as a constraint then. It's just what we have to deal with.
     
  23. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    I think you're making too many assumptions about what I said. Or maybe I wasn't clear enough. I didn't even hint that states should decide about teaching Science. In fact, what I said was "don't exclude STEM." There is a certain core to education.

    Either way, Your claim is mistaken. It's not that those 31 states don't allow teaching about the Holocaust, it's that they don't require it. My suggestion is, if a local district--the community, parents, etc. -- doesn't feel a need to include the Holocaust, then it should have a choice.

    Forcing schools to teach things like that may seem fine, but it does go both ways. Would we be ok forcing a class on American slavery and racism? The 1619 Project? Should a rural school system not be able to have vocational classes for farming? I'm saying let the local people decide what their kids will learn.
     
  24. Adfundum

    Adfundum Moderator Staff Member Donor

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    The article is from 2017 I believe. Regardless, you're correct that the problems have been around for a while.
     
  25. LafayetteBis

    LafayetteBis Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    UP THE LADDER

    I quite agree, so let's stop wasting-good-money on the DoD and spend available funds (derived from out Tax-Dollars) on getting our kids educated* to a point where they can pursue their own destiny but at least with the proper mental-means to work competently in this Brave New World of ours.

    Namely of predominantly Services Industries that need competency behind the Internet-screens and not just "warm bodies" on a production-line.

    Which means clearly that the Federal Government sponsors financially the post-secondary state-schools in the education of the American Workforce! (That is, from Skills Training right on up-the-ladder to Doctorate Degrees!)

    PS: And anyone who might not care to follow that educational-route can always find more menial work. But, knowing that they had the option but willfully refused it. At the lower-end exist today Skills Training Programs - like how do manipulate a bulldozer. For which they can apply to be trained and obtain a license. Or any such kind of work that requires a period of training.
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2021

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