During my high school years, I had the acquaintance of a fellow student – a person who still holds a strong presence in my memory. This person was one of the most ambitious, most determined individuals in the school; today she goes to one of America’s top universities. She may very well be the next president of the United States – and this is a serious statement.
One day this student asked me an interesting question: “What do you see me doing when I’m fifty years old?”
I teased, “I see you as a high school English teacher.”
She laughed, “I would kill myself if that happened.”
This simple sequence provides a powerful illustration on why America’s K-12 education system is so bad. The best and the brightest view teaching K-12 as a demeaning profession. Go to a class in Harvard, for instance, and ask what the students there want to do after they graduate. There will be lots of future investment bankers, lawyers, and politicians. There will probably very few K-12 teachers, if any at all.
In the countries with the world’s best education systems, places like Finland and Singapore, the conversation above makes no sense. Ambitious, talented people – like the classmate mentioned above – actually want to be teachers in Finland and Singapore. In America this isn’t the case.
This is a big reason why America’s public education system is so weak. A strong education system has good teachers. Logically, a country in which talented people want to be teachers will have good teachers. A country in which talented people belittle the K-12 teaching profession – say, a country like the United States – will probably not have good teachers.
The college system provides another example of this. In America being a professor is quite a desireable job; a lot of very intelligent people dream of teaching college students. Not coincidentially, America’s university system is the best in the world.
The great conundrum, then, is making the K-12 teaching profession desireable to people like the classmate mentioned above. In other words, one needs to change the culture. That is a very hard thing to do. Short of boosting teacher salaries to lawyer-like levels – something which will cost at least several hundred billion dollars, and which nobody is thinking about even in their wildest dreams – there is no easy solution in sight.
There is, of course, more to the problem of American public education than this. Education involves not just teachers, but students as well (indeed, students are actually more important than teachers). Even the best teachers cannot make gold out of students who just do not care for school. And, if one is honest, there probably is also something to the claim that American students are generally less motivated than students in, say, South Korea.
It doesn’t seem possible, but I agree with everyone!
Our system is upside-down when the best & brightest students look down on teachers. Most of the students would respect the teachers if their parents did.
The public school funding system is a joke. It has produced poor facilities and forced administrators to hire college graduates willing to take a low salary, low esteem job.
And finally, I need to agree with inoljt. It’s up to the students to get an education. It is easier for them if they have access to nice facilities well stocked with the latest & greatest supplies, tools, technology, and quality teachers. It becomes even easier if they are lucky enough to be born to parents who value education and pass that trait on to their offspring.
I think any student (or parent) wanting to get a good education and prepare for college, trade school, or the workforce can get that education in any school in the country. It requires effort on the part of the student and the parent(s). Learning is not a passive activity!
The difference between graduating from high school and getting an education is all between the ears!
Great comments! I definitely think that what you’re saying is helpful.
Public schools are doing, in fact, precisely what they were designed to do: Train workers to be compliant and give them just enough skills to follow orders. Following orders is a major part of the American scholastic agenda. Talented people don’t want to be teachers because they see, first of all, that the government does not fund education well enough to create a true learning environment–with not enough materials, chairs, or books, let alone enough time for an individual teacher to address all the problems in her bulging classroom. Secondly, American institutions as a whole are bound up in bureaucracy, staffed by products of an education system that stresses memorization over critical thinking, drudgery over creativity, and silence over enthusiasm. For those who hire, the system is working perfectly. For those who do or don’t get hired, it’s a one-way ticket to a life of watching TV.
I agree that we need to improve our schools, but the most compelling change in the area of student performance has to come from within the family and their own value systems. If the families don’t have those values, then that’s where we need to “break the mold”. In general, children of families who place education as a top priority do well in math (and other subjects), regardless of the school they go to or quality of instruction. We, as a society need to get back to the basics. Parents need to stop raising their kids on video games and make education a priority; schools are only a part of that education. We supplement the schooling of our children with additional books and materials after we come home from work. There are no video games and the TV only gets turned on as a reward to watch movies together once or twice a month. On weekdays after school they are in piano classes and swim team. On weekends, art class. We don’t take much time for ourselves, but then again, our children’s education is in our OWN hands, so that’s what making it a priority looks like in our household
I think parents play an important role, even more important than that of teachers.
But ultimately, ultimately, it’s up to the students themselves and their willingness to learn.