The Modern American Education System of Old
Since being enacted in 1837, the height of the Industrial Revolution, American education has been shrouded in mediocrity. While education’s intention has historically been linked to preparing students for future careers, those careers have changed drastically over time. When public education was still new, careers featured jobs exclusively in factories as assembly-line workers; this limited job choice caused schools in those days to be solely focused on creating workers for America’s ever-expanding industrialization, a decision that was effective for the time.
Rather than teaching basic arithmetic and the like, the school system was created for conditioning students into certain behaviors, namely uniformity and obedience – an important commodity for factory workers. To encourage this type of behavior, the students were taught how to follow directions without deviation, when to ask questions, and when it was appropriate to stand. Skills such as how to work on a schedule, how to do tedious work consistently without complaint, and how to conform to basic society were highlighted.
Today, we are taught how to follow directions without deviation, when to ask questions, when to stand, how to work on a schedule, how to do tedious work consistently without complaint, how to conform to basic society as well as how a2+b2=c2. Despite having a society based in a climate of innovation and change as well as access to a much wider variety of jobs, students are restricted to a system that discourages this same innovation and demoralizes creativity while denoting work ethic, potential, performance, and self-worth into a single letter. Taking all this into account, one might blame teachers for pressuring students into this uniformity; however, blaming teachers for a government-mandated and funded system seems unjust.
Despite the American public school system having eight decades of operation, in terms of teaching as well as the systems used to encourage learning, there has been minor change. The most notable changes over the last two decades being George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and Barack Obama’s Common Core State Standards Initiative – which have been regarded as failed experiments. In the matter of the No Child Left Behind Act, or the NCLB (enacted in 2002), the bill’s purpose was to address the sudden and unacceptable drop in standards in American public schools by mandating that states create measures of adequate yearly progress (also known as AYP) based on standardized tests.
All in all, while some schools did see improvement, the results often showed uneven and overall negative scores. According to history.com, “Teachers complained that standardized testing cut into class time and forced them to ‘teach to the test’,” a sentiment that, even after replacing the NCLB with Every Child Succeeds Act in 2015, is still an exceptionally large concern. Unfortunately, this problem is only reinforced with the still operating Common Core Initiative. Enacted in 2009 with its purpose being the preparation of students for college and careers as well as making America more competitive academically, Common Core introduced a new set of academic standards, first adopted by 43 states, to establish benchmarks for what students should know and be able to do. The benchmarks placed an emphasis on math and language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade. As for the success of common core today? According to the nation’s report card from 2019, grades four, eight, and twelve have either not made considerable progress, in terms of testing scores nationwide, or have decreased entirely.
For many within the American public school system, whether it be students, teachers, or principals, it is hard to have hope for a brighter future regarding education, especially when the problems present are continuously passed onto the next generation. The bills that have been put in place now disregard anomalies in student study habit or learning methods and even dismiss teachers’ expertise in their own subject matter; bills like the ones mentioned above are like putting a band-aid over a heart attack – utterly useless. By denying underlying issues within the system, we instead create new ones; addressing the outdated means of teaching and the standards that enforce them are key to achieving higher scores and more adaptable students in society. Despite having one of the highest costs per student, America is still lagging in education. Things need to change – and I implore you to seek that change.
