Americas Education System is Whack
Fact: Every year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States alone. That’s a student every 26 seconds – or 7,000 a day. What are we doing wrong and how can we fix it?
The education system in America is broken. Most students and parents are not engaged in their learning. The most important issues out of an endless list of issues are: teachers are teaching to one learning style, schools are overcrowded, and standardized testing.
There are four basic learning styles: oral, visual, read/write, and kinesthetic. Public schools in America aren't teaching to all of these learning styles. Classes are often lecture based. Teachers just throw information at children, hoping they will catch it. A study by wizelearning.org shows that 50% of students fall into the kinesthetic category. Kinesthetic means that a person learns most efficiently when carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations. If classes are mostly lecture based rather then kinesthetic, learners end up getting left behind. The public school system in America needs to step it up so there is truly no child left behind.
US students slipped from being ranked 18th in the world in math in 2000 to 27th in 2012, ever since the use of standardized tests has skyrocketed since 2002 when No Child Left Behind was mandated. According to standardizedtests.procon.org, standardized testing isn’t benefitting the youth of America. It is generalizing the knowledge they are learning instead of tracking growth.
I want people to step back from the education system, analyze it and fix what is broken. Please don’t leave any child behind.