United States Educational System is Broken
I am passionate about our educational system—and disappointed with its failings. I just finished reading a Washington Post article called Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous.
wrote:
If Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country’s education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills. Every month, it seems, we hear about our children’s bad test scores in math and science — and about new initiatives from companies, universities or foundations to expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering, and math) and deemphasize the humanities. From President Obama on down, public officials have cautioned against pursuing degrees like art history, which are seen as expensive luxuries in today’s world. Republicans want to go several steps further and defund these kinds of majors. “Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?” asked Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott. “I don’t think so.” America’s last bipartisan cause is this: A liberal education is irrelevant, and technical training is the new path forward. It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition. The stakes could not be higher.
The problem is they are missing the point entirely. The current educational system is broken.
K-12 Education
Our K-12 educational system is broken.
After a near-fatal bicycle accident in 2004, I left the high tech industry to teach high school math. I taught Algebra I and II for two years.
(More: Being Hit by a Car Changed the Course of My Life)
Question: When was it decided that one should take Algebra I, Geometry, and then Algebra II—in that sequence—in high school?
Answer: 1890s
What I have discovered is that very little has changed in our public school curriculum in over 100 years. YIKES!!
Listen to the most recent episode
When I was teaching Algebra II, I discovered that I was required to teach logarithms. WHY??
When I was in high school in the early 1970s, you needed to understand logarithms to be able to use a slide rule. Click here if you have never heard of a slide rule! Other than that, logarithms were pretty useless.
So, little has changed in our K-12 educational system, but the kids have changed a lot. It is failing so many of our students (especially those who are gifted artistically).
Now, we have a proposal called Common Core. It radically updates the way we teach English and Math.
99% of those who oppose it politically do not understand the problem and have never read common core methods. It is a political hot potato.
The vast majority of students leave of our K-12 educational system ill-prepared for higher education.
Why?
They only learn what can be tested via multiple-choice test. Common Core fixes this, at least for Math!
By the way, to fix this, we need to start with pre-kindergarten!
Our Higher Educational System is Broken
Why do we go to college for four years? Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Arts, etc. all take four years to attain. Why is that? I sure would like to know.
I spoke at the Women Communicators of Austin Speed Networking Event this last weekend. It was a thriving audience of University of Texas students who aspire to be great communicators. They were all worried about getting an education, gaining employable skills, and garnering experience from internships so that they will find a job when they graduate.
The problem is the cost! They cannot pursue a liberal arts education that teaches them to think…something that many baby boomers pursued via the higher education system.
Today, when students graduate from the higher educational system, most come out with hefty student loan balances.
So, when Fareed Zakaria writes articles like Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous, he misses the point. Most are obsessed with getting a STEM education because then you can get a job to pay off the student loans.
Our higher education system was built to create students who can think. What students need from their higher education system are the skills to get a job to pay off their student loans.
What our higher education systems should produce are students who can think, have enough skills to get a job AND not leave them hopelessly in debt.
Fixing our Educational System
Not much has changed in our educational system in over one hundred years. The needed changes will take a long time. We need to ask ourselves some hard questions:
- Why do we have summer break for three months in the K-12 educational system? We know having such a long break hampers students’ progress when they return in the fall.
- Why do colleges have summer break, when a significant portion of the student population are over 25 years of age?
- When we know not all children learn at the same rate in all subjects, why do we structure schools this way? (By the way, this drove me nuts when teaching Algebra!)
- With the availability of the Internet and video conferencing, why do we have college campuses?
- Given the diversity of our younger population, why are we not teaching both English and Spanish? Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore!
I have taught adults for close to 20 years in approximately 40 different countries. I taught Algebra I and II from 2004-2006 in an inner city high school. I can tell you these other countries do not have the answer for teaching to our highly diverse population.
It will take a long time, but the current system needs to be re-evaluated from the bottom up.
Unfortunately, we have politicians in control who have not a clue of the real problem.
Marc MillerLike What Your Read? Get Career Pivot Insights
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Marc,
I really appreciate this article and am glad you took the time to call attention to our educational system’s inadequacies. I completely agree with the majority of what you wrote. I do think a few of your suggestions are oversimplified though (especially relating to Common Core, which has several inherent flaws and still maintains problematic aspects of our antiquated education system). I think well-intentioned-but-under-informed individuals might try to make the changes you suggest hoping that it would “fix” everything. Unfortunately, the system is beyond fixing. It would be like putting a band-aid on a bullet hole or a broken leg (whichever analogy you prefer). For the most part, I was thrilled to read your article though; calling attention to this problem has to be the first step, as many are not educated or aware of these issues. Thank you for the thoughtful article which does exactly that.
Carly
M.Ed., BA
(yes, I am a liberal arts grad)
Carly,
Common core is NOT the fix but it is much better than what it is there now. Here is Texas we have politicians make changes and they are clueless to the actual problems.
Thank you for the kind words. This post was as much a rant as anything else! 8^)
I taught Math and it wasn’t adding up. I was also endorsed to teach all cognitive impairments and taught all grades gen. ed. and special needs…
Ten years later I found manufacturing and automation. .. And I discovered how impaired the wjole of pur America is… I hold 2 degrees, a BA in psych., a BA in education, and 2 prized certificates one K-8 in Math/K-26yrs of age C. I., and now Fanuc Robotic Programming level one… All this, before learning HOW TO TURN A WRENCH.
I was inept, feminized I thought. So…
As long as running a BANDSAW can pay me 780 a week after taxes, is as long as one more teacher quits to venture the real world, with real money. As long as robotic companies seek 60-80% travel… As long as the traditional family model will suffer. If I hire in, I’m looking at 80k… Thats more than I could have earned STARTING, than over a WHOLE LIFETIME working up a now nonexistent step scale as a teacher (like walking up a down escalator, pay is frozen all over MI)
By God this opens a can of worms. What is it that we seek in education? Here in Michigan, recently this year a millage increase for technology was voted DOWN… by over 80 percent of voters! 4 years ago the same increase, overwhelmingly passed.
In fact, the schools cited “buying each student an ipad” as part of their betterment of “technology”… Ipads, toych screns, whuch are in every home, trailer, and apartment.
Indeed, teachers sadly lack even the most basic wherewithall of the outside world, kept shadowed by liberal ideologues and institutions, most teachers live in a private fantasy island made in their minds and grifted from recycled materials… They are sold the same optimism they are to sell the kids.
Autoshops close… They don’t reopen. Schools invest millions in… New football fields? Teams dont get better… 1.3 MILLION for a new track at the local high school? I paved my driveway, 100 feet long with asphalt, for free, from a highway having been resurfaced… I knew ‘a guy’.
Schools have no clue about the cost of materials, and if not the vast internal corruption, then easily swindled, by entities which relate mostly to organized crime or the local mafia. Hence why areas like Macomb County Michigan are under federal investigation.
The elites opened for-profit schools, now controlling colored and minority populations with even greater ease go forth in the perfect bluff.
The fact is… Like you said even my summation barely tackles a single area. THE WHOLE SYSTEM needs to be revamped, the whole focus.
My belief is we will see a large revolution, and it will be those looking to empower themselves rather than ask how their empowerment be defined, that will lead in causes. There will be social upheaval in the schools, as now even their monetary safety nets such as subs are failing and the public us waking up. Standards go up for students, down for those teaching them and its past coming to a head, the whole glass will tip in our lifetimes.
As long as strong voices exist…
People asked me to tutor, grown women cried, and many children cried each time I was displaced in the failing school system… Every time at least the kids cried.
In children we see innocence, we see those closer to God. They react when they know decisions are wrong in their hearts and on my way out, always noting even in the Godless public schools that God, only God knows why but when one door closes, another slams in my face but I keep going, and I know they’ll keep going too. I told them they have rights to sign petitions… I told them they have the voice, because mine in that time was muffled. New ideas, creativity, stifled.
I brought statistics… I brought recognizable influence. 1.5… In one casw 2.5 grade level increases in reading comp., oral fluency, writing, and the rest. I brought significance… The math spoke… To no avail.
The symptoms of this system are all due to human error, human sin, and human beings.
Only through an act of providence, by God, will order ever be restored. It is time for the whole nation to pray.
Thanks for the article… It got me thinking!
Now I dream of hoards of young men seeking like I do… I didnt buy new windows for my home, I’m in process of fabricating them. I didnt buy a retention wall, I built one from rocks gathered in the river, chicken wire fence and posts… I didnt hire an electrician… I learned to wire and soon I’ll weld. I didnt hire a painter I learned from a contracter as a hired hand.
God gave us hands along with our minds… Tell the students that. If they seek a career laying bricks… Teach them how to build a skyscraper.
We negate, we ignore, we displace their natural intentions… Well I say, there’s many routes to freedom. May we all find our own, if not literally build our own worlds of peace. And may the states remain in complete control of their schools and rule out the feds, amen.
Marc,
I hear your rant and agree on a number of larger points. Our common needs as society require that we raise healthy, thinking young adults who will be contributing citizens. Indeed, our national security depends upon educating our children to not simply have technical skills but higher order thinking in order to apply skills with wisdom, to understand potential outcomes and adjust accordingly.
Our best higher education systems have allowed the time for discussion and reflection, through interactions with peers and educators. It is through these conversations, practice and testing of oneself that we learn the most. The MOOCs aren’t showing their predicted successes because the majority of folks learn best with others, where relevance and additional perspectives are naturally introduced and thinking is challenged–and grows.
We have much to do.
Anne
Anne,
I disagree with on why MOOCs have not been successful. MOOCs have not been successful because most of them are not very good. Moving classroom education to online is a lot more complicated that just recording a professor.
Your comment that “the majority of folks learn best….” is patently false. I have taught all over the world and developed both in person and online curriculum and we all learn differently. When I went to the Peoples Republic of China and discovered my “western” adult learning theory did not work there it became so obvious to me that we all are different.
I like it!
the school system is great no changes needed
Uh oh we have a fan of the status quo. Right on Marc as a teacher and educator our education system needs a bottom-up radical redo for the 21st century economy where there are no more jobs for life. Sadly our k-12 education resembles that of the industrial era producing tons of high school grads without the skills needed to compete in our country for careers that require a two year degree or less.
Uh oh we have a fan of the status quo. Right on Marc as a teacher and educator our education system needs a bottom-up radical redo for the 21st century economy where there are no more jobs for life. Sadly our k-12 education resembles that of the industrial era producing tons of high school grads without the skills needed to compete in our country for careers that require a two year degree or less.
the problem is the educational system was designed during the industrial revolution and still thinks we live in that time period we live in the information age where a click of a mouse can find information on any subject in multiple languages
it’s broken and needs to be fixed
I myself was labeled with a multitude of disorders for enforcing human rights humanitarian criminal refugee law and aspergers for studying geography
whose the dumb and disabled one now?
Roman,
You are preaching to the choir. I agree with everything you wrote.
Marc
You are all missing the point. The education system has failed because most school, school districts, etc. , are not focused on the students. Everything is about the adults who lead the education systems. I applaud you for pointing out the obvious, but what about those new stadiums schools, who employ coaches who use the student/athletes until they are not capable of being productive and tell college recruiters they shouldn’t recruit the player because of personal reasons? Or the administrators who, steal money from the schools to enhance their lives? It’s not the systems, it’s the people who run the systems!
Respectfully
I personally think that a huge fundamental problem is the way failure is presented to students. People always say that failure is a learning experience. By that logic, failure should be an integral part to the school system, but failure in this system is hard to overcome. Success means nothing, Failure means everything. This can lead people to be failure deprived, which is not helpful at all. This is a problem that cannot be fixed, at least not within this current way of teaching and learning.
I completely agree that r K-12 educational system is broken. And I don’t know why the government doesn’t do anything that they need to do… It’s hard to understand why they don’t improve our children systems, that make a better life in the first way for all country and then for everyone. If we have more specialized specialists then our economics will grow also… All is very simple, yes? Silly… I think everyone has a lot of arguest to education system but no one can tell it. That what a big problem.