September 2019 – Is the U.S Education system broken?

Pepsi

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The Share a Coke Campaign is what I want to use as my civil artifact for my speech, so I thought what would be a perfect artifact for my essay? Pepsi of course.

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If you remember during the Super Bowl an ad aired starring Steve Carrel, Cardi B, and Lil Jon responding to people at a diner who were wondering if Pepsi was okay. They very enthusiastically convinced the person ordering that Pepsi was way more than okay. I thought that this add was particularly funny because it seemed unreal when it was playing. Every single time you go to a restaurant and they serve Pepsi products and you ask for Coke they ask if Pepsi is okay.

This took me by surprise because of how Pepsi embraced their role as inferior to Coke and used it to their benefit. I also thought that one thing that was particularly interesting about this add was the choice of celebrities used in it as they picked one of the most beloved comedians ever in Steve Carrel. Most people have seen the Office and thereby would trust what he has to say. This ad is targeting all of the people who would normally dismiss Pepsi as simply a second-rate version of Coke.

Coke being better than Pepsi is a largely held belief by mostly all people especially in the United States. This add appeals to the ethos, logos, and pathos of the audience.

Now that I’ve actually written this proposal out, I realize that this would be not that good of an artifact for my essay. I realize that the only reason why I’d even pick this in the first place is because Pepsi is related to Coke. But other than that, there is really no good reason for me to pick this topic because it is kinda trash.

Finland’s education system

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In the last blog post, I mentioned how the United States’ education scores were improving every year domestically but not in comparison to other nations. One nation in particular that has been doing exceedingly well with their world renowned education system is Finland. Finland’s education system has been known as one of the best in the world for the last few decades. They were thought of as one of the worst in the 1970’s and they really took it to heart making significant changes to their system. The United States, on the other hand, hasn’t made any real substantial changes in many years. They do a lot of things differently than the United States, and many people think that we should adopt their ideas.

One of the main differences between America and Finland is the structure of schooling. America has always subscribed to the traditional K-12 structure, but Finland does something different. Students don’t start school until they are at least 7 years old. There is a large emphasis on kids being kids and enjoying their childhood without being brought down by the stress of school. They provide a strong emphasis on play and they actually have play time everyday during school. They also only require students to go to school up through freshman year of high school.

These seemingly small changes are actually very significant as many children in America seem to view school as a forced obligation and may even sometimes refer to it as prison. In Finland, school can actually consistently be something that is seen as fun without interfering with student’s social lives. Finland also has significantly shorter school days especially when children are younger. On average, the school day for Finnish children is about 3 hours and 45 minutes including lunch and playtime which means that they outperform the United States in every major educational category while having a little over half of the school that they have.

One of the largest differences between the United States’ education system and Finland’s is that the U.S gives their kids hours of homework every night while Finland’s kids only have around 30-45 minutes of homework each night if that. Their thinking is that student’s shouldn’t have to deal with the stresses of school at home. Finland wants their citizens to be children as long as they can. They also care a lot about the happiness of their citizens and that is thought to be the greatest reason why their students do well in school.

If you think about the culture associated with schools in the United States especially high schools most of the things that come to mind are negative. The number of school shootings has risen drastically in our country to the point where we averaged about one a day. Also, when you think of high school you can see the stereotypes about cliques, bullying, suicide, etc. All of the shows and movies set in high school deal with these themes. If you’ve ever seen Mean Girls or Thirteen Reasons Why or any number of other teen dramas then you know exactly what I mean.

When I researched Finland on the other hand, I could only find records for three school shootings ever. This may not actually be true because I couldn’t find that much information on it, but you get the point. Schools in Finland rarely ever get shot up. They are seen as fun and peaceful places of learning in contrast to American schools where people are sometimes fearful for their lives. If we want to improve the United States’ education system then we need to change the cultural perceptions and stereotypes associated with it.

Rhetorical situation in Hit em Up

NSFW Warning

In perhaps the greatest rap diss song of all time Tupac and his Outlawz clap back at his rival Notorious B.I.G. The exigence or problem is that Biggie was apparently the one who ordered a hit on Tupac or at least knew that he was going to be shot. He came out with a song called “Who Shot Ya” where he basically claims the attempted murder for himself. This was also during the height of the East Coast vs. West Coast rap beef back when rappers were actually hardcore drug dealers and would murder people straight up. Both Pac and Biggie were former drug dealers and had ascended to fame extremely quickly.

The audience for this song is first and foremost Biggie himself, his best friend Puffy, and all of the other East Coast rappers who found themselves caught up in the mix of this iconic rap feud. He starts the song by saying that he had sex with Biggie’s wife and it only continues from there as he pokes fun at Biggie in a variety of ways while also lyrically murdering him. The other audience is the general public as this was at the time when rap was breaking through to the mainstream and many people were invested in this tragic feud.

Tupac also made several conscious decision in the making of this video and song. He made fun of multiple of Biggie’s music video and had someone who looked like Biggie and his wife in the video. Also, he used and modified a beat that Biggie had already used in order to add insult to injury. After that, he went on a 2 minute rant to Biggie and everyone who had recently dissed him. He was constrained in that many people were on the side of the East Coast rappers, but I don’t think he was really trying to change anyone’s minds. He was just trying to expose Biggie which he did, and it unfortunately led to the death of two of the greatest rappers of all time.

American Education System

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The Education system in the United States does not exactly have the best reputation domestically and internationally. Americans in general are kind of known as fat idiots. There are many problems with our education system here in the United States, but there are also many misconceptions about it as well. This series of passion blogs will explore these ideas and more while also addressing how we can improve the education system here in America.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that Americans are progressively getting worse test scores and becoming dumber every year. This is not true. Our standardized tests show that students’ reading and math scores have been steadily increasing for the last 50 years with math scores being much higher than reading. When comparing average test scores from 2019 with average test scores from 2000 in America we see great improvement. So why do people still think that our education is getting worse?

The answer is quite simple. Starting about 30-40 years ago, the United States and a lot of other countries starting comparing their test scores with each other’s. At first, America’s test scores were very high in comparison to all of the other nation’s. Now, however, our nation’s test scores are about average or a little below average in comparison to other nations. Why have our scores declined in comparison to other countries?

America started at the top with most of the other countries being below us. As the years have gone by, other countries like Korea, Finland, and Japan have placed a significant emphasis on their education systems in order to catch up with other countries like us. America however hasn’t made and real strides to keep up the pace. We have not made any major changes to our classroom model or educational system since we created it over a century ago.

Studies show that the amount of money that you spend per student has no effect on whether or not the student will perform well. It’s not about how much money you spend, but rather about how you choose to spend your money. Many countries spend far less money per student than the United States yet they outperform us in standardized tests every year. Conversely, many other countries choose to spend more money per student than us but some of them still do extremely poor on their standardized tests.

One thing that is very interesting is that the top 2/3 of students in America score near the top of all students in the world, but the bottom third of American students score very poorly which is why the United States is below average. This shows that there is a lack of educational equity meaning that opportunities are not the same at each school.

A strong misconception is that educational performance and equality of opportunity are exclusive to one or the other but this is simply not the case. In one study, America scored below average in both math scores and equity in educational opportunities. Many other countries however have achieved above average scores in both categories. Korea, Japan, Finland, China, and countless other countries have proved that it is possible to achieve both goals. In a lot of the cases, increasing scores in one of these categories does the same for the other.

The United States education system is a hotly contested issue as there are many different schools of thought as how to fix it. If we only look at the domestic test scores, we wouldn’t see any problems. But, if we compare our scores to other countries we can see that the problem is very real. And we need to do something drastic soon in order to get ourselves back on track before it’s too late.

Rhetorical artifact

We encounter ideologies through artifacts everyday in our lives whether we actively think about it or not. One of the most common artifacts that we see almost every day is the American flag.

The American flag symbolizes freedom, liberty, hope, etc. In grades K-12, we are required to say the Pledge of Allegiance every single day in before class. This seems like a very normal commonplace idea to us, but most other countries never do this and would consider that to be very weird. By saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day at school, we were constantly instilling patriotism and nationalism within ourselves and every other citizen.

Most people don’t even think about the words that they are saying in the pledge because they are so ingrained into our brains even from a young age. But, if you listen to the words we are constantly hailing America as the best, and literally pledging your allegiance to it every single day. Also, every classroom that I went into K-12 had an American flag in it as if they needed to remind us what country we were in.

Another thing that was in every classroom of mine was a cross because it was a Catholic school. I thought this was perfectly normal because I had gone to private Catholic schools my whole life, so it was a total culture shock to me when we didn’t pray or say the Pledge of Allegiance before my first class at Penn State. I didn’t mind saying the pledge every day or praying before class, but that was because that’s what everyone I knew did every day.

I’m definitely happy about that because they were always shoving those two things down our throats by making us pray and say the pledge everyday and I didn’t even realize it until now that I’m at a state college.

Artifact that inspires civic participation

Penn State Pride is a very real thing and in my Army ROTC unit we shout “Penn State Proud” every day after our physical training. There is perhaps no greater example of Penn State civic engagement than the lion shrine. Every time I pass by the lion shrine on the way to this class, I see a line out to the street of the people in line to take a picture with the famous lion shrine. It’s the second most photographed landmark on the University Park campus behind only Old Main. It was donated as a gift from the class of 1942 and instantly became an iconic landmark on campus. I know that each time I pass by and see people taking photos with the nittany lion I feel some of that Penn State pride. This simple statue reinforces each and every student’s identity as a Penn State student. We also see this through the way that all Penn State students dress in gear every day going to class.

This same type of energy is present all throughout state college and nowhere is it more evident than on game days when 107,000+ gather together at Beaver stadium in order to rally behind our football team. The football games is a structure where all of the students at PSU can join in on a common enterprise which is cheering on their school as they crush other teams in football. Penn State perhaps more than any other school has a sense of school pride that is genuine and unites an entire school against our enemies( Pitt, Michigan and Ohio State). Every ig post or sign made on gameday has an “eat shit Pitt” or “Michigan still sucks” plastered on it. Even the most popular chant we have, the “We Are” chant literally makes every single individual see themselves as Penn State itself. All of these things whether it be the football games, lion shrine, Old main, or the “We Are” chant constantly reinforce our civic engagement in the campus encouraging us to participate in what it has to offer.

We are encouraged by others to participate in these activities in our everyday lives and Penn State offers us the structure to participate in them with others which encourages us to be civic.