One of the most common criticisms of the pre college education is that it has not changed for decades. Despite these recent times having the most indication and changes ever, schools appear to have been stagnant. Or at least this was the most common criticism pre-Covid. This pandemic has forced massive changes to the education system to be made, but do these changes actually address some serious fundamental issues, or are they just a change of face?
When saying that the classrooms look the same, what does that mean exactly. Well, a single teacher educated a class of around 20 students. The teacher has to fit a certain amount of information in each day, and they have to try and move at a pace equal to the average or close to majority of their students. Students go from class to class by a bell, forced to take mainly the same classes(last two years of high school has more variation), with the same amount of time set for each class. More problems can be said, but these are the most notable, at least in my opinion.
So why are these fundamental issues like I’ve said? Well frankly, moving all students along the same curriculum simply is not effective and does not work. All students learn information at different paces, based on the subject or even individual lessons. Conforming all students to learn at the same speed both limits some students and moves too fast for others. It results in all students being held back in some way. A system where students can learn at their own pace, while still being motivated, would be ideal.
This system also does not take into account the different fields students are interested in. Now granted, all students need a fundamental level of education, but we should also have specialized options available more early and often as well.
I agree with most of the points here, I actually almost did my civic issues blog on the education system. The issues here are going to be very hard to avoid In my humble opinion. If you try to separate children at a young age to make classes either advanced or less advanced, there will be backlash certainly from parents whose children did not make the advanced class. Not only are drastic changes needed, I think there also needs to be a culture change. On the points of lack of variation of subjects, it is hard to change those, I feel as if every kid should be learning the basic necessitates to help the succeed in life or university. Also at many larger high schools, kids as early as 8th grade have very different class schedules, this is simply due to the larger funds bigger schools have access to. Overall great job! I am excited to read more.
Our schooling system isn’t great, but it is a pretty good compromise to make sure that students receive the best feasible education. Individualized attention would be ideal, however is impossible without drastically increasing funding. Schools would need to employ far more teachers to be able to meet every student’s needs. In addition, thanks to the pandemic, we learned that most students are not compatible with online education. I believe the school environment is needed to keep students motivated. However, with our limited resources, this does mean we have to teach large groups of students the same. I like the reverse classroom system, which lets the students learn at home and work in class. I think this gives the teacher more time to provide personalized attention to the students that need help the most.
This was a subject that I was heavily invested in last semester when I was doing my research for my paradigm shift essay. There have been many modifications to the American education system as it went through laws and regulations such as the NCLB (No Child Left Behind) Act and onto what became the ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act). In the end, I wasn’t able to come to a conclusion or solution for the system, besides looking into other countries and their education systems and how they’ve surpassed ours.
I love the topic of the transformations that the education did and is still going through. In one classroom there could be different personalities that process information in different ways and at different paces. And I do agree that the education system still does not acknowledge and is does confuse or hold back students from achieving their full potential in being successful. Even after the pandemic, I still feel like going back to the same education system that we had pre-covid is not a good idea because for two to three years students have changed their behavior and way of studying. Thus, in order to successfully get back to in person learning teachers and professors must change their way of teaching and the education system must be changed.