Fun Little Facts About You, and Our Education
This is an average L.A. high school student's point of view on our current education system.
Dear Ms. President,
First off I hope you find a good ethical stress reliever when you’re in office because as you know people get weird when they have all that stress as president.
Now the real thing I want to ask you is how do you think education can help you. Now I know that if you keep people uneducated they are easy to manipulate, you know all that ignorance is bliss stuff.
So let’s look at the down sides of funding education. First it would make people more independent and free thinking and it would make them question you more and more and you don't want that so there’s one. The next one is that you would lose your opportunity to fund other departments such as the jails and the army. And if you stopped funding them people would think that you making America weaker by letting the criminals run free and making our nation defenseless. I know why people are so dumb; hey you know what would fix that! Education!
Okay so now for the upside to funding education. If you fund education you'll set the future of the nation. You don't want the rest of the nation ending up all being ignorant, now do you? Funding the educational system is one of the most important things you could do in office. And when I say fund I do not mean just give the foundation more money. I mean actual reforms in the structure of modern education. Take examples from Singapore, South Korea and Japan, if you need some help.
The two things that need to be fixed are standardized testing and student debt. First let’s look at standardized testings biggest face: Pearson. Pearson has one of the largest grips on the school test market. Pearson tests have been proven again and again to be inaccurate and not properly asses the abilities of the students who that them. The former school board member of Orange County Rick Roach found it odd that his area was scoring low on the English section of the FCAT State level report which was funded and produced buy Pearson, so he took the test for himself. The test labeled him as a poor reader, even though Rick Roach is a teacher for 39 graduate courses at six universities. In that case I would hope that the test IS wrong and not capable of accurately measuring an individual’s intelligence. It most likely is though, because if it’s not then there’s a whole new problem with the current state of this country's educators.
Now the college school year has just begun and the students will be ending this year not just with their filed internet start up and a tacky polyester hat and gown, they’re starting their first step in to the real world with a staggering amount of debt. This year student debt topped over one trillion dollars according to Last Week Tonight. "The US State Government has cut college funding by around 30% over the past 8 years" says Susan Dynarski a writer for the economics section of the New York Times. So it seems like that the government has decided that even though education is incredibly important it is not important enough to actually pay for.
Well, I hope you enjoy your time in office and move our country to a more educated and reasonable place. This country is relying on you to keep it safe and lead its inhabitants to a higher and worldlier future and that does not have to always mean involving ourselves in what is happening outside our borders, the world inside is just as important.
Sincerely,
Chase C.
11th Grade High School Student