The news is filled with stories coming out of schools, highlighting issues such as violence, dress code conflicts, teacher misconduct, and student misbehavior. You name it—the school system today is essentially a metaphorical mixing bowl, with young society trying to function under one set of rules. And yet, new laws, regulations, mandates, procedures, and policies are constantly being forced into place by the government to ensure that children don’t fail, that equality is upheld, and that every child finds a place in the broader educational landscape. When a child doesn’t fit in—whether due to emotional challenges, coming from a broken home, or experiencing a poor socioeconomic background—no one is held accountable. So, the burden inevitably falls back on the school system. As a result, yet another set of rules is created, leaving the impression that today’s school system works for everyone.
News flash: It doesn’t!
Consider bullying. Bullying has existed for as long as people have been alive. Yet today, in this era of feel-good parenthood and childhood without boundaries, the bullying issue is one that schools are now being pressured to address. Years ago, these matters were handled at home, through upbringing and morality—and sometimes on the playground.
When children graduate today with high test scores from mandated testing, does it really mean they are ready for life? Are teachers more concerned about teaching to the test to secure their bonuses than they are about teaching life skills? Just because a child can recite information from a book (or an online tutorial), does it really mean they have been properly educated? Are students learning to think critically, make decisions, and engage in quantitative reasoning? Or have they simply learned how to get by with the least amount of effort?
The Question Today: Is the School System Broken?
Few people would disagree that the school system has, in many ways, replaced parents in today’s society. It is no longer solely the responsibility of parents to instill good behavior, raise responsible citizens, invoke morality, or teach children to think for themselves. Today’s children are robotic and answer-driven, simply because that is what the public education system has taught them to be. When parents can’t—or don’t—take responsibility for their child’s learning, the morality and behavioral expectations of the family, the school system is forced to pick up the slack.
Unfortunately, the school system was never designed to act as a parent or guardian. Schools are supposed to educate. And even that, which they were originally designed to do, is often executed with ambivalence.
While parents expect their children to learn the life skills needed to succeed during school hours, under the watchful eye of the government, the reality is that school systems, by design, are simply meant to maintain the status quo.
Parents need to reintroduce the idea that schools teach what the government and governing bodies want children to know. The routine public school has neither the time nor inclination to produce young people who are motivated to think for themselves, question authority, or further their education. As long as schools are run by governments, they will be bogged down by red tape, focused on equality, and driven to the point of mediocrity.
Dr. Rudy Crew, author of the book To Save Our Schools, shares some alarming facts about the U.S. school system:
- One-third of American eighth graders cannot perform basic math. This means more than a million thirteen-year-olds can’t perform the simplest calculations needed to buy a candy bar or ride a bus.
- One-third of all teachers leave the profession within their first three years; by five years, half of them have left.
- A black child in Washington, D.C., has less than a 30 percent chance of learning how to read before they turn ten.
- The odds that any given ten-year-old in a large American city can read are about fifty-fifty; nationally, six in ten children can read.
- Only one in five students entering college is prepared for college-level work in math, reading, writing, and biology.
Dr. Crew also highlights this shocking excerpt from his book:
“Our schools aren’t just struggling to teach academics and civics; they’re also failing to produce young men and women of substance. And before you shrug your shoulders and say, ‘That’s not a problem in my neighborhood, no gangstas in my gated community,’ you should know that in 2006, the Josephson Institute of Ethics reported that 60 percent of students surveyed said they had cheated on a test in the past year; 35 percent admitted to doing so at least twice. One-third had plagiarized from the internet, and 62 percent said they had ‘lied to a teacher about something significant.’”
Given the research and the competition the United States faces from other countries, it’s clear that our school systems are failing our students. Around 70% of the U.S. labor force is made up of high school graduates, while more skilled, higher-level jobs are increasingly being outsourced or filled by individuals educated outside the public education system.
When a country that cannot balance its own budget is responsible for educating its people—and ranks 24th in the world out of 29 major public education systems—it’s time to reconsider what our children are actually learning in school and whether their time spent in these ‘status quo’ institutions is truly serving them in life.
Is the school system broken? Or has society, in general, turned its back on the value of education and the role it plays in shaping our children’s future?
