I have studied abroad twice in my life. Once in high school and again at the university. In high school, I spent a year at a Japanese high school in a very rural part of the country and at the university, I spent a year in Germany. After having spent time in two different education systems, it has dawned on my just how completely flawed our education system really is.
While I don’t want to delve into the specifics as to why the other education systems are better (in some cases, they aren’t any better), I do want to point out some of the things that I find truly ridiculous about our own education system. I will start with elementary and middle schools.
My mother teaches the fourth grade at a public elementary school. I have heard all sorts of horror stories from her about school bureaucracy and politics. When she first began teaching several years ago at the fifth grade level, concerns about things such as state-backed standardized testing were negligible. As time has progressed, however, these state-backed tests are all the children are taught to. In fact, the teachers themselves are practically told to teach directly to the tests so that the school can get maximum funding. If the kids do not do well on the tests, then the schools do not well, and since state-funding is directly connected with the results of these tests, the schools that need the money the most are unable to get it. The government’s idea behind this is the encourage both schools and children to do better, but in reality, they are severely hurting the children. Some children will not do well because they can’t, others will not do well because they simply do not test well, and yet others will not do well because they don’t see a reason to and just don’t care. Standardized testing doesn’t take this into account.
Another problem with these standardized tests is when they are to be given. In Colorado, we were always tested in March. The problem about giving the test in March is that students are expected to know the entire year’s worth of content by March. That means teachers have to cram ten months’ worth of content into eight. The time after the tests is then practically useless as the teachers have already taught everything they needed to teach for the year before the tests.
It seems that every year after these tests are finished, there are mass protests against them among teachers and parents alike. They don’t necessarily get out their pickets and demonstrate in front of the capitol, but there are always petitions to dispose of the tests and some of them gain quite a respectable amount of signatures. You would think that these arrogant politicians who owe their positions in the government to us in the first place would take that as a huge sign that the standardized tested is most unwelcome.
Part 2 is coming soon and will address some of the major problems with high schools in the US.
