Many people of all ages have different views on education. In the following essay I will compare two authors’ ideas on the educational system in America. I will share my thoughts from the essays titled “Against School” by John Gatto and “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose and how they relate to my experiences and schools today.…
These past few weeks in class, I have found myself really questioning my own understanding of education. The article “The Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez has showed me that people have very different experiences with their education. Rodriguez describes himself as a child: successful, a scholar, eager to learn, and the perfect student. He also describes his changes as he continues to grow in his academics. He surpasses his parents in intelligence and soon realizes that he is becoming so different than them that they can’t even hold a conversation. Rodriguez then continues, arguing that education distances people from their families and origins.…
Felix Padilla’s primary thesis is that young people, also known as youngsters, are unable to connect with social life efficiently, so these individuals turn to gang participation to form their self- identity, self-connections within the society, and to promote upward mobility, meaning to move forward in society. I must note that these youngsters including Padilla are Puerto Ricans from Chicago. One example to support Padilla’s thesis is ethnic and cultural discrimination. This was a major disadvantage for these youngsters because they viewed themselves as victims of ethnic and cultural discrimination. They explained that outsiders of larger societies treat them poorly due to their ethnic and cultural background.…
This case exposes the issues of equality in the education system, and more specifically, within standardized testing. Standardized testing is a set metric used to measure the academic ability of all students who take the test. However, as is illuminated in the case of Lara and Roy, this kind of metric only reveals a small piece of information about some students’ academic achievement. Lara’s creativity and Roy’s social skills were invisible to eyes of the standardized tests, and as a result, they were penalized for, not their own, but for the tests’ shortcomings.…
The culture of society has revolved around the idea that education is the key to every person’s success. However, people have the stigma that one who earns an education equivalent to that of a high school graduate, is not as intelligent as a college graduate. Society needs to stop valuing education based on the level of education one has obtained, but rather by how one can incorporate what he or she has learned with the demands of the general public.…
Today, 314.5 million people call themselves Americans. Each of them, with God permitting, will make the journey to old age. However, in this huge set of individuals, roughly fifteen percent of adults over the age of twenty-five have not received a high school diploma (“Educational Attainment in the United States: 2009”). By itself, this percentage feels rather small, and so we as Americans pride ourselves in our educational system. After crunching the numbers, however, this measly percentage actually represents twenty-nine million Americans, twenty-nine million individuals who lack an accomplished high school education. Aristotle would be displeased to say the least. In 2008, then senator Barack Obama delivered a speech to the Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts titled “What’s Possible for our Children.” Though intended for his election campaign, the speech also reflected this introduction’s attitude, calling attention to the gaping holes in American education. More specifically, however, Obama promoted educational reform based on a three-point platform: “fixing” No Child Left Behind (an act which encourages state standardized tests to measure and regulate primary and secondary education in the United States), encouraging teacher reforms and furthering teaching…
Flying Kites On A Pond (Essay #1 to Jerome Stern's What They Learn In School) Jerome Stern's What They Learned In School challenges the phrase "the sky is the limit" in the case of today's methods of school education. While we are taught that education further develops human characteristics and the understanding of life, Stern points out the ironies. Instead of the intention to expand, to explore, and to inspire, he feels today's education is hypocritical of what it preaches.…
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” Martin Luther King, Jr. During the Great Depression, not everyone was given a decent education, and it most certainly was not the number one priority. You were pretty much fine if you were in a rich white family, but the further down the caste system you were, you harder it was. In Maycomb, the Finches, the Cunninghams, and the Ewells all have a different view of their education, inside and outside of the schoolhouse.…
In Mark Kingwell’s argumentative essay “Education, Democracy, and the Life Worth Living” (2012), Kingwell argues that people should not assume how well someone is educated based on how much money he/she earns. Kingwell’s purpose is to express his opinion towards education in order to convince the reader that education should not be about currency, but rather about making an individual more intelligent and better equipped to cross the threshold into the real world. In this essay Kingwell appears to be writing to any citizen who wants to learn what real education should be about.…
Since the mid-1800s education has been a very important factor in living a successful and happy life. Education has become an essential part to getting jobs and expanding knowledge. Education theory is the theory of the purpose, application and interpretation of education and learning (ucdoer). The theories Of Education depict the many different ways people learn, and how different schools and places handle the many ways of learning. Two of the many theories of learning are The Meritocratic Theory and The Democratic Theory, while discussing these theories writer Louis Menand in “Why We Have College” menand states the reasons why colleges exist and how certain people understand what college is for and how society separates different groups of…
In the story “I Just Wanna Be Average” the author Mike Rose argues that society very often neglects and doesn’t see the full value and potential of students.…
It is dumbing down our children by focusing solely on reading and mathematics. By ignoring everything but basic skills, it is not preparing students to compete with their peers in the high-performing nations of Asia and Europe, nor is it preparing them for citizenship in our complex society” (Ravitch). Some of the contributing factors to the failing education system can be described as far back to 1837 when the famous American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed the essential influences on a man’s education in his speech “The American Scholar.” In this speech, Emerson describes several aspects of how students should learn and these points can still relate to today’s education system. The American education system has many lacking aspects and Emerson addresses some of these issues in his speech. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” describes the problems with today’s American education system by explaining the lack of creating well-rounded students, the confinement of…
The twin goals of equity and high-quality schooling have profound and practical meaning for our economy and society, and we cannot permit one to yield to the other either in principle or practice. To do so… would lead to a generalized accommodation to mediocrity in our society on the one hand or the creation of an undemocratic elitism on the other” (page 11).…
Martin Luther King, Jr., an American minister, activist, and leader in the Civil Rights Movement, once said, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.” King is pointing out that education is meant to challenge people in order to shape their minds and thoughts. The importance of education has been written about countless times. Many intelligent writers have written articles on higher education, such as Horace Mann’s “From Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, 1848,” Jean Anyon’s “From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work,” and John Taylor Gatto’s “Against School.” In their writings they point out the flaws in the…
Educational equity is a federally mandated right of all students to have equal access to classes, facilities, educational programs, curriculum, instruction materials, assessment and evaluation materials no matter what their national origin, race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, first language, or other distinguishing characteristic. The public schooling is often regarded as “the great equalizer” in the American society. For many years, American students supposedly have had an equal opportunity to master the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Therefore, it is assumed that any student who works hard would have the chance to go as far as his or her talents and abilities allow, regardless of family origin or socioeconomic status. “This assumption regarding opportunity and emphasis on individual talent and effort seems to be natural offshoot of the rugged individualism and self-reliance that are so much part of the fabled American character.” (Schmidt, Cogan, Huoang, 2009)…