December 2012
Penn State Beaver Roar
Page 7
Opinion
U.S. education system fails to make the grade Schools are more focused on test scores than actually teaching students U.S. education was recently ranked 17th in the International Student Assessments (ISA), which tests reading, mathematics and science among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. ISA has been used as the global standard student assessment since 1997. U.S. education has always been slightly above or below the average scores among OECD countries. The gloomy fact is the U.S. government seems not to recognize the fundamental problems of its system. For example, strengthening the mandate for state exams and tying each public school’s funding to those test scores is not the solution,
in my own words
Kyung Min Kim since less funding doesn’t increase scores, according to Immanuel Wallerstein, a sociologist at Yale, and Noam Chomsky, a philosopher at MIT. What U.S. society has lost in the 21st century is humanism; the loss of moral values is the critical problem in the U.S. educational system. As a consequence, the U.S. educational system has solely focused on making monetary profits. In other words, schools are focused on raising test scores sim-
ply to protect or enhance their funding. Should education really be about making a financial profit? Is this the right focus for the nation’s schools? Martha Nussbaum, a legal philosopher at the University of Chicago, has, through her books and public journals, criticized the current problems of “Education for Profits” in the current education system. She further warns that the current trend of reducing courses in humanities will eventually demolish democratic or civic values as students lose the the need for engaging in civic activities. I recently had an opportunity
to talk to some high school teachers, and they brought up similar problems. Since they asked me not to use their names, I will just refer them as “they.” “A lot of classroom time is lost preparing for and taking all of the state-mandated tests rather than just teaching the curriculum,” these teachers said. “Also, students are often unprepared for class — they don’t bring books, pencils or even notebooks, which reflects the poor work ethic, irresponsibility and a poor attitude toward learning,” they added. “We have to struggle with competing with smart or iPhones as we have to constantly be on the
lookout for students using phones underneath the desks.” Whichever school I’ve been to, I’ve found teachers complaining about students, parents complaining about the school and students complaining about teachers. But we must know that there isn’t much that teachers, students and parents can do to fix the current problem. The basic purpose of education is defined by the government. For the government to recognize what’s going wrong, the teachers, students and parents must realize that their constant attention and collective voice is needed to alert the government to the need for educational change in America.