Flaws In American Public Schools

Ashley Walden

Professor Amanda Walzer

English 100

10 February 2014

Falling Through the Cracks in American Public Schools

American novelist and university professor John Gardner once wrote, “All too often, on the long road up, young leaders become servants of what is rather than shapers of what might be.” In my experience with the American public school system, I have seen too often that students have become indifferent, disenfranchised and stripped of the colorful aspects of their individuality that could spark a future change in the world. Students are faced with the unparalleled pressures of this 21st century American culture demanding all at once too much and too little of them both inside and outside their classroom walls.
The American public school system is built upon a foundation that is crumbling under the weight of a myriad of seemingly endless challenges; and as the achievement gaps in our performance as a country continue to widen our future leaders face a sobering reality of their own inability to compete with their international peers.
As a modern international “super power”, the United States has, according to some, always boasted of their citizens, democracy, our military prowess, and so on to be the best of the best. We imagine ourselves to be in the place that everyone else in the world is wishing they could be, and this belief has indeed become the cornerstone of patriotism in our country. However, in the case of our public education system, when we consider the facts and statistics of the our true performance matched up against several other developed countries, the United States and it’s students show shockingly low performances in every major subject on standardized tests. For example, in Marian Wright Edelman’s article, “Cuts in Education: A Failing Choice”, she mentions, “The United States ranks 24th among 30 developed countries in overall educational achievement for 15-year-olds. A study of education systems in 60 countries ranks the United States 31st in math achievement and 23rd in science achievement for 15-year-olds.”
Teachers are underpaid, overworked, and given little respect and gratitude for the work that they do which can lead quickly to apathy and indifference in the quality of instruction their students receive. Students must try their best to stay motivated despite the seemingly inescapable obstacles presented to them by their teachers’ attitudes and curricula, school day procedures, and the lack of support from extended learning programs after school and during summer months due to government spending cutbacks. Students are also taught only one specific way to learn and to prove their academic growth, and this does not take into account any individual skills or merits outside of test taking abilities. American public school students in turn have become less motivated to participate in class, do their homework, or even attend school at all. The weathered and weak foundation of the traditional American public school system has become an even more perilous danger to our youth as more time goes on, and many students are not lucky enough to escape falling through the cracks that our system we so desperately cling to has