Good Enough Is Not Good Enough
Good Enough is Not Good Enough
The American secondary school system is not good enough anymore. A lack of focus has turned out students with neither the skill nor the ambition to compete in the current job market. Leaders and educators need to examine the problems in the current system and correct them before it’s too late. By looking at vocational and alternative schools, which currently turn out graduates ready to compete, they can remodel the current curriculum in order to meet the global occupational demands of the 21st century. How can the richest nation on earth lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to education? We are already outsourcing many of our technology sector jobs to foreign countries. Asia and Mexico have virtually taken over our manufacturing jobs. Manual labor jobs are going to immigrants who happily take on the work that Americans don’t want to do. If things don’t change, how will this generation of high school graduates compete for jobs in a global economy? An education is essential. Many of the current problems can be traced to the dumbing down of educational standards. “Virtually everyone has heard how poorly American students perform, weather compared to foreign students or students of a generation ago” (Sowell p.1). A study of American and Korean high school students showed that while both groups were close in scores on standardized tests, the Korean students far surpassed the Americans when it came to critical thinking (Sowell). Most people will agree that the American school system doesn’t do a good job. Year after year American students fall behind the students of other industrial countries. It has become a national joke that a high percentage of high school kids can’t find the United States on a map of the world. Blame is placed on the overcrowded classroom, ineffective teachers and under funded schools. But these are not the root cause of the problems. Even if the problems were corrected, the schools would
The American secondary school system is not good enough anymore. A lack of focus has turned out students with neither the skill nor the ambition to compete in the current job market. Leaders and educators need to examine the problems in the current system and correct them before it’s too late. By looking at vocational and alternative schools, which currently turn out graduates ready to compete, they can remodel the current curriculum in order to meet the global occupational demands of the 21st century. How can the richest nation on earth lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to education? We are already outsourcing many of our technology sector jobs to foreign countries. Asia and Mexico have virtually taken over our manufacturing jobs. Manual labor jobs are going to immigrants who happily take on the work that Americans don’t want to do. If things don’t change, how will this generation of high school graduates compete for jobs in a global economy? An education is essential. Many of the current problems can be traced to the dumbing down of educational standards. “Virtually everyone has heard how poorly American students perform, weather compared to foreign students or students of a generation ago” (Sowell p.1). A study of American and Korean high school students showed that while both groups were close in scores on standardized tests, the Korean students far surpassed the Americans when it came to critical thinking (Sowell). Most people will agree that the American school system doesn’t do a good job. Year after year American students fall behind the students of other industrial countries. It has become a national joke that a high percentage of high school kids can’t find the United States on a map of the world. Blame is placed on the overcrowded classroom, ineffective teachers and under funded schools. But these are not the root cause of the problems. Even if the problems were corrected, the schools would
Cited: Village Press, 2001. Johnson, C., “Public Education System Problems, http:mbsoft.com/ public/school, December 14, 1998. Sowell, Thomas, Inside American Education, The Free Press, New York, 1993. Toffler, Alvin., Future shock, New York: Bantam Books, 1970