With the Presidential primaries heating up, we are hearing the sound bites of the candidates on all the various topics. From the debates to the campaign commercials, we hear elevator speeches on the themes viewed as important today, each designed to reach a particular demographic group. Often we hear the typical negative campaign ads, which many say they do not like, but which clearly work very well.
Some tout that jobs are the most important issue or a change in the tax laws. Various national policies are paraded out as being important. I think each of these issues are very important. But I believe that ultimately the most important issue in our political arena is our country.
How do we view our country? Is it a place where everything is provided for you? Does everyone need to have equal stuff? These are some very serious questions. Should certain opportunities be afforded certain people in order for them to achieve particular goals? Who should determine what these goals should be? Someone must make a decision.
Education is the core answer to how define our country. Every state has a different view of education. If you have ever moved from one state to another, you or at least your parents probably discovered that expectations are different from one state or town to another. Various forms of standardization have been attempted and have failed. It has been a one size fits all scenario.
The people of this country need to redeem the education process in this country by becoming involved. It needs to be recognized that everyone has talents. Not only that, but everyone learns differently. The current system of education dumps all children into one type of learning style. That means many struggle. Some students are just not expected to achieve much in their life and their educational opportunities reflect that. Even if a student somehow manages to graduate high school, there are other challenges in the college arena.
Studies have been conducted that show that if an educator believes that a group of students are high achievers that these students will do well in the class that this educator is teaching. Similar studies have also shown that if an instructor believes that their students are low achievers, that the grades of these students will reflect this belief.
It has been reported that United States students do not do well in math and science. I have found that high school students are funneled into four years of math and three or four years of science in high school. For those not familiar with the higher levels of science, these courses are largely math classes as well. However, depending of course on your degree program, in college students do not always need to take anything close to these higher levels of math and science. I propose that students in high school be given an opportunity to opt out of these higher levels of math after basic Algebra and general science in order to explore the various career areas they may be interested in. In place of Algebra II or Trig, let’s introduce basic economics – something that everyone can use to run their everyday lives. I believe that we have raised the bar too high for many students and that because of this there are more drop outs and fewer students going to college or even completing college. If we create a good solid foundation, we can build a great country.
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