EDUCATION IN IT'S CURRENT STANDINGS

Education in the United States is for the most part provided by the public sector: control comes from three levels, federal, state, and local agencies.  Because education provided in our country is public and free, we have run into many problems when it comes to equal educational opportunity and still continue to do so to this day.  As a nation, our most current educational goal is to once again become a top nation in providing education to mold young minds and ensure success in creating well-rounded citizens.  Recently, it has come to our attention that our educational systems seem to be failing, especially in comparison to the rising success of other countries.  In order to instill competition with other nations in our educational programs and philosophies, in 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act was passed.  Another major current issue is the inability for distribution of secure funding to schools due to our nation’s debt, furthermore leading to major cuts in programs both the national government and state governments believe to be unimportant.  

Although our assignment explicitly stated that our interviews would ideally NOT be conducted with a friend or a student, as college students and education majors, it is us who hold the future as to which direction our nation’s education will be steered in.  As an education major, the topics we come across are very subjective and therefore, there is no right or wrong answer.  Mostly all of the classes we take are discussion based seminars and although our professors will lead our discussions in certain directions, the most they can truly do is offer us insight and inspire us to be the best teachers that we can be. 


“Those who cannot do, teach..” a saying I’ve heard people use way too many times.  There are many people who think that if they don’t make it in their field of interest they can just fall back on teaching as a means of income.  What may be a newsflash to everyone: this statement is false and the hiring of those in that sort of mindset can be partially blamed on why our educational systems seem to be currently failing.  It takes a special kind of person to teach: the unlimited amount of hours put in to training, the passion to help children learn, and the determination to never give up on a single student.  I can go on for hours about this topic but instead, I decided to bring another education major into the picture to explain a current issue in our educational systems: the cut down of art and musical programs.  Just listen to Katy speak and from her tone of voice you can hear how passionate she is about the journey she is about to embark on.  My apologies for no picture to match the voice, the camera on my ipod seems to be broken!