William Lunsford

Why the Public Education System Is Failing

Everyone knows that kids do not like learning in school, but it is required. As a 19 year old who lives in Georgia, I had to attend school until I was 16, until I had the option to drop out; however, I chose not to because I knew I needed to stay in school and get a college degree in order to be successful. It is required by law that you attend school in some way; however, the people making and supporting this law are not the one's going to school. Adults look at schools and remember when they attended because it all looks familiar. Have you ever noticed a teacher in your high school that you find out attended the same school when he was in high school? So why does that teacher recognize the school, notice nothing has changed, eat the same meals as they did before, and use the same teaching methods as they were taught? Adults always say how much the world has changed and how different the technology is from when they were growing up. They remember sitting in rows of desks at their public school and learning about chemistry and taking exams on who the 23rd president was and what bills they passed. If you ask that same adult today, in 2019, I promise they will pull out their phone and search for it. Rows of desks were originally organized to get children in the mindset of having everything even, and the feel for lines for the assembly lines in the early 20th century. A lot of teachers today will tell students to think outside of their comfort zone and reach out to new ideas, but the desks are still the original idea and the same style from when school started in 1821 in Boston. The public education system forces kids to take classes they will never use and then shame them for not doing well in it. You teach a mathematician world history and they struggle with it. You tell them they are not smart enough, "Look at the person next to you who did really well," or, "You just aren't good enough." So why discourage people into thinking they are not intelligent enough for the world if they do not need that information to be successful? If that person was discouraged and started to believe that they are not good enough for the world, then they will never try to achieve their goals. Those goals could have saved lives of many or solved a cure for something fatal, but that one teacher told them they would never be successful since they couldn't learn something as fast as someone else. When an adult has a question about their job, or has a question about something they are going to, they ask someone or search for an answer on the internet, but phones and talking are not allowed during an exam. A standardized test was created by Alfred Binet to test knowledge on a certain subject matter. In the real world of 2019, tests are not taken, quizzes are not handed out, and if they are, you can use your resources. Almost every kid in high school in the United States has a device they can access the internet with, but are not allowed to use it when they have a question. They are forced to take classes which will not affect them in the future, and read books that are 2,000 pages long and filled with information that can only help them for the test they will take.