Education Essay

The current, test based, American Educational system fails to instill in student a desire for life- long learning and does not prepare them to be well rounded and successful adults. A change in educational philosophy needs to be made in this country before it is to late. Educations is what defines a person life and without a proper education, people wont be able to go anywhere in life. Students usually study for their test and forget what they studied the next day. After school all students want to do is get away from their work and not have to do it anymore. There is not necessarily a perfect educational system, but it could be better than what we have now. People are not going where they are supposed to after schooling. There is a book, That Used To Be Us by Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, which can prove this. I recently read That Used To Be Us. This book explains how America used to lead the world in technology, education, economy, research and creativity. Now we are falling way behind many other countries. The authors explain that we are failing to meet major challenges that we face and if we don’t find a way to rise past this it will effect future generations. One major flaw in America right now is the educational system. If our future generations lack the education, especially in math and science, they will not have the skills to navigate through the new economic turn. If we can’t access new talent and develop new markets then other countries will beat us to it. This is definitely something to think about. The current test based system is a joke to the students who only care about what they receive on the exam. Especially in High school, everyone’s trying to get into the best college they could. Grades are all that matters to colleges and kids will do what they need to do to get them. Once they have them, they no longer care about the material they needed to achieve those grades. Now with all this studying and homework the student are given, they are from then on turned off from learning anything new. Once a student graduates college and can try and get a job, he no longer wants to further his education. Without the further education it gets harder to find jobs and support ones family. The last part of the educational system, that most tend to skip, is the most important part. This is the part where one becomes exceptionally knowledgeable in a certain field. With these degrees it makes it much easier to find work and make enough income for what you have. The current system has to be changed for all these reasons. A student should leave each grade with all the information he learnt, stuck in his head. He should leave each grade excitedly knowing he has another year coming, to further his education. Right now that is no possible.