An Education of Their Own - Chelsea Mason

Schools in America today have followed a standardized format of education. This is a problem because it leaves some students behind and others held back. In January 2002, George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act to try and guarantee that everyone would have access to an education, and that every child could keep up. This is a problem for all Americans as people become standardized, and nobody is able to reach their full potential. This standardization could lead to ignorant Americans that become prey to government scams, to marketing scams, and to attacks on the nation. To improve education by 2050, schools should be de-standardized and individualized by the government.

Americans who have found success in the standardized schools and the government might say that this aspect of education is not a problem and might say that the education system teaches “everything that might be needed in everyday life,” but with the jobs that are being created today, such as big businesses like Google, this becomes increasingly untrue. It is difficult in America today to get a job without an education that is good enough to allow a person to go to college.

Government workers might say that the standardized education allows for all students to be educated and that the different programs allow for every student to be educated. If the standardized schools were not a problem, the need for special education for the deprived and gifted programs for the successful would not be necessary because all students would be able to succeed in all areas according to the grade they were in. According to Genius Denied, “Instead, perhaps because of ignorance, but in many cases because of ideology, the nation prefers to live with the consequence of the sorry state of gifted education: thousands of frustrated kids whose talents are wasted” (Davidson 49).

If the education system today was a success then the tests students take in the classrooms would reflect 100 percent every time since all students would understand the material the exact same. The problem is that not all students learn at the same pace since not everyone is the same. According to Salman Khan, “And even that 95 percent student, what was the five percent they didn’t know?” According to Khan, in order for students to do well, there must be mastery and that anything below 100% is not good enough. That 5% of lost information could turn into that proficient student’s downfall. Khan then continues with an analogy of being tested after learning to ride a bike for two weeks, “‘Well, let’s see. You’re having trouble taking left turns. You can’t quite stop. You’re an 80 percent bicyclist.’ So I put a big C stamp on your forehead and then I say, ‘Here’s a unicycle.’ But as ridiculous as that sounds, that’s exactly what’s happening in our classrooms right now.” Khan is trying to point out that in American schools today, students can receive an “average grade,” C, and still be allowed to go onto more difficult subjects that require the mastery of past knowledge, riding the bike, in order to be proficient in new information, riding a unicycle.

With standardized education, students continue to learn, to do homework, to study until the test, and after the test, it is onto the next subject that builds upon the previous ones. In this system, students attempt to continue to learn concepts they do not fully understand. Following Khan’s analogy of the bike, a student gets a low B in algebra and passes before taking geometry, where they get a C because they had not gained the full knowledge from algebra needed for the mastery of geometry. Rather than promoting mastery, America promotes efficiency, which causes students to fall behind due to misunderstood concepts. This mindset keeps even the best of students from achieving their full potential.

In this standardized method of learning, schools try to have students learn material by offering good grades. The students who are unable to maintain good grades wonder why they did not achieve this and often, continue to stay behind even if they are trying their best to keep up. Achievement motivation, according to Myers, is “a desire for significant accomplishment; for master of things, people, or ideas; for rapidly attaining a high standard” (490-491). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations help to keep people motivated. Intrinsic motivation is an internal drive that leads people to do well for their own sake. Extrinsic motivation, however, is caused by rewards and punishments (Bihun). By constantly rewarding children for good grades and punishing them when they do not, it undermines the intrinsic motivation of children to learn. The extrinsic motivation that society casts upon children, in the long run, is de-motivational to the joys of learning and lead to feelings of entitlement as rewards like extra credit are continually offered to promote success.

To solve this problem and restore the intrinsic motivation of children, the solutions are to de-standardized schools and make them more individualized according to each student. De-standardizing schools would allow for every student not only to feel unpressured by the thought of standards but also allow every child to focus on their own abilities and help others in theirs. Tests would not be eliminated in this system, but rather, be used as a way to measure the areas students are performing well in and the areas they are having trouble in so that teachers could intervene earlier and help the students to achieve mastery.

By individualizing education, the American dream of divergent-thinking students who are fluent, flexible, original, and elaborative can finally be achieved (Baer 14). Khan pointed out, “When you let every student work at their own pace – and we see it over and over and over again – you see students who took a little bit extra time on one concept or the other, but once they get through that concept, they just race ahead.” In order to have an effective education for all learners, the curriculum must “provide opportunities for students to develop in-depth understanding… is mentally and affectively engaging to the learner… recognizes and supports the need of each learner to make sense of ideas and information, reconstructing older understandings with new ones” (Tomlinson, et. al. 11-12). This means that children need to have the time to be engaged in course material and to really develop understanding by building upon old knowledge before new knowledge can be gained.

To achieve this individualized system, tenure would also need to be removed. Tenure is another extrinsic motivation that causes teachers to slack off once tenure has been reached. Tenure started as a way to “protect professors from arbitrary or political reasons” (Guggenheim). However, many teachers who do well in the classroom get paid the same as teachers with tenure who do nothing. Students progress about three times as fast with a good teacher than one who covers only about half of the material. In New York, about 100 million dollars is spent each year for teachers awaiting tenure meetings at the Reassignment Center to read and do nothing rather than teach. About 1 out of 57 doctors lose their medical license, 1 out of 97 lawyers lose their law license, yet only about 1 in 2500 teachers lose their teaching credentials. Tenure has become less of a protection in the equal-opportunity employer nation America has become and more of an obstacle to providing good teachers to students who need it (Guggenheim).

America in general might be against this solution. De-standardizing schools would be a long and difficult process. Parents might be against reform in the schools due to the sheer difficulty of overcoming the system that America has. In the film Waiting for “Superman,” multiple offices and unions have been formed in an attempt to better schools. These offices and administrations, however, “have become the things that prevent [schools] from working” (Guggenheim). Reforming the offices of America and providing evidence that a more individualized education, such as Khan Academy, does work can revise the education system. It is a long process to change the way a school system works, but as Hopkins says, “There are no pat answers. Experimentation, imagination, and determined effort can provide the means to help youth find their place in life” (10). Without the effort of America, nothing in education will change and students will continue to fall behind.

To achieve a de-standardized and individualized educational system, reforming the administrations that run the schools would need to be the first step. In America, the federal government and the state governments both provide funding to the schools and have their own rules about how the money is to be distributed (Guggenheim). With so much funding being passed around, the different administrations are unable to focus on which schools need help. By reforming the way the flow of money gets to schools, funding would reach even poorer schools.

To receive the funding necessary to de-standardize the schools, money from the teachers unions, such as the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) could be used. In the past 20 years, both the NEA and AFT have contributed at least 50 million dollars to candidates running for president. This makes them the biggest contributors to campaigns so far (Guggenheim). By focusing less on who gets elected and more on what is actually happening in the classroom, it might help a lot of teachers receive the necessary funding to do their jobs.

Though it is expensive at first, technology can also be used as a way to lower costs while also promoting education. By having lectures online, like Khan Academy, students could watch lectures at home, allowing them to listen, pause, and repeat material to understand what is actually being said. If students wanted, they could also do practice exercises to see if they understand the material. Then, in class, teachers could focus on what the student did and did not know having watched the lecture. Work could be done in the classroom, allowing the student to help students with concepts they did not understand rather than having another lecture and not allowing for questions to be asked or answered. Tests would be used to measure the understanding of the student and to focus on trouble areas. This use of technology could cut the need for paper and ink since handouts would be less imperative to understanding the material being covered since some of the work would be done at home.

If this problem is not solved, America will continue to fall behind other nations and students will continue to fail at education. In Washington D.C., reading proficiency is at 12 percent (Guggenheim). The rest of the nation does not look much better. To have students truly understand subject material and to learn, this issue must be addressed. Without a strong education system to base students learning upon, the chance of attending college decreases, the chance of a good job decreases, and the chance of jobs being shipped overseas increases, creating an economic sinkhole.

Growing up in America, people are told, “The children are our future.” By reforming administrations, using technology that is available to us, and having better teachers in the classroom, some of the systems that are already in place can be improved upon. The entire system does not need to reform, but many of the aspect of it do. Other solutions like special education and gifted programs do not work. Even with such programs, some students race ahead and others are left behind, de-motivating them to continue learning. Individualizing the education system is the only way for every child to succeed.

De-standardizing and individualizing schools allows for students to understand material and to do peer mentoring to achieve their full potentials. Without the ability and time to fully understand the material being taught, students need to be given the chance to enjoy education rather than to be stressed that they cannot keep up with required material. Not only do students receive a better education by finding ways to understand what they do not know, the economy could boom because of the younger generations’ ability to comprehend and to adapt to new situations, allowing for more flexible and higher achieving jobs.

Even if this solution is not the correct or viable solution, education is an issue that needs to be addressed as more people think learning is not fun. Many students refer to school as difficult, boring, and a waste of time. As Daisy said in Waiting for “Superman,” “Find different ways to make the learning fun” (Guggenheim). By individualizing education, students might have the opportunity to grow, finding education more fun for it will be an education of their own.

To achieve this type of reform, Americans need to reform their thinking that “no child is left behind.” In the system that is currently set up, every child is left behind as they struggle and compete with their peers. By de-standardizing schools, students can stop competing and actually help each other in their educational pursuits. The idea that some are gifted and some are special needs affects the way children learn, having already set a notion of overachievement and over-justification or the notion that “you just aren’t good enough.”

Every parent wants to see his or her child succeed. Almost every president since the 1900s has proposed some kind of educational reform (Guggenheim), but no one has succeeded. More and more students are failing out of school in schools that the Washington Post calls “drop out factories.” Everyone keeps thinking to try and improve what is already there when what is already there has been proven to not work. Perhaps it is not crime that causes poor education but poor education that causes crime. To improve the quality of lives, the quality of the economy, and the quality of America, education needs to be reformed.

Works Cited

1) Baer, John. Creativity and Divergent Thinking. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers, 1993. 14. Print.

2) Davidson, Ian, and Jan Davidson. Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.

3) Guggenheim, Davis, dir. Waiting for "Superman.” 2010. Film. .

4) Hopkins, Lee. Let Them Be Themselves. 3rd ed. New York, New York: Harper Trophy, 1992. 10. Print.

5) Khan, Salman. "Let's Use Video to Reinvent Education." TED Ideas Worth Spreading. TED. March 2011. Speech.

6) Myers, David. Psychology. 9th ed. New York: Worth Publishers, 2010. 490-491. Print.

7) Tomlinson, Carol, et. al.. The Parallel Curriculum: A Design to Develop High Potential and Challenge High-Ability Learners. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, Inc., 2002. Print.

References

1) Bihun, Joan. "Motivation" Introduction to Psychology I. CU Denver. Denver, CO. 11/14/2011 – 11/28/2011. In Person.

2) West, Martin, and Paul Peterson. "No Child Left Behind." Education Week. (2011). Web. 28 Nov. 2011.