America: What of Education Now?

The United States has never been known for having the best education facilities in the world but at least they were of a standard acceptable to the rest of the world.

Today though, the standards have reached a new low and are continuing to decline.

The cost of education in the US, per student, is the highest in the world, yet the results of that education are disappointing.

31^st in the world at Math, 17^th in reading is not something that the country can be proud of, yet they spend more on the education of their children than any other country.

Over the years, successive US governments, eager to have Americans employed by the top companies, have reduced the standard of the tests.

This means that when a company requires workers that have reached a certain academic level, they look for the pass certificates of an applicant. When the quality of that certificate has been reduced, the employer is being short changed. The governments have been short changing the American businesses for several years and now it is beginning to show.

In other countries the standards have remained the same, meaning foreign businesses are getting smarter employees and this relates to smarter ideas and perhaps better efficiency.

Why did the US government do this?

They did it because the education system itself, the teaching, was inferior and not capable of producing enough passes within the students. If they had not of reduced the standard, businesses would have had to seek foreigners to fill their posts, a situation unacceptable to the US government.

Now I do not blame the US government for not wanting businesses to employ foreigners but why do they always pick a route of degrading the standards instead improving the quality of the education?

Is it that it would not be in the interests of the political system, to have a better educated populace?

Is it that the politicians are worried that to make the necessary changes would be unpopular and that they are more concerned with their short term personal future, than they are with the long term future of the country?

Surely it can’t be that hard if third world countries can achieve better educations with just a fraction of the money.

I believe that the problem lays in perception.

I believe that over the years the politicians that lead the educators have prescribed a formula of instilling in the students, the belief that they are the best, instead of teaching them to be the best. It is easier and leads to happier students, if not brighter graduates.

The politicians are concerned that if this lead is not followed, the students may not believe that their politicians are the best or that their political system is not the best. After all, didn’t this educational decline start after the protests about the Vietnam War at the universities? An embarrassment to the government, one which they do not want repeated.

Today, sadly we witness a display of how bad the US education has become. Not just in Math and reading but also in history.

A US Marine unit was photographed displaying a sign of the Nazi SS. The official response to this photograph was that the marines thought it was a sign for “snipers”.

Are these Marines members of a repressive regime or the victims of a poor education?

If the US politicians really want the American people to fight to satisfy the elitist’s egos, they should at least give them a good education first.