America Needs Radical Education Reform

One of the most alarming ways in which the United States has fallen behind its global competition is in education. In a country filled with internationally renowned private universities, our public education system is fundamentally broken. After countless reforms have failed to produce results, we resort to blaming the apathy of our youth or the laziness of our teachers. The flaws in our education system are due to its obsolete structure and its increasingly business-like leadership. The only solution to these problems is radical reform to the entire system.

The American education system is obsolete because it is based on a model that was developed in the industrial era. Students are grouped into batches that come out of the system once per year, as if they are identical goods to be mass-produced. Students are taught primarily according to textbooks, which tend to be 5 to 10 years old. In the 1950's, it may have been acceptable to use a 10 year old textbook, but in the 21st century knowledge progresses much faster than that. Compounding the problem is the fact that science and technology will change even more between the time that they read the textbook and the time that they actually use that knowledge, if they ever do. Schools should adopt modern technology and teach students from the most accurate and comprehensive source of information that we have: the internet.

The way that our education systems groups students into classes is counterproductive towards learning. To assume that all students of the same age have the same academic abilities and needs is like assuming the same for all students of the same height. Instead, students should be grouped by their experience and interest in particular subjects. Within boundaries, students should have the freedom to learn about things that interest them at the pace that suits them. This could be accomplished by changing the nature of the classroom from being time-based to being subject-based. This would give students the ability to move back and forth between different rooms depending on what subjects interested them. It would naturally group together students with similar needs, and would also allow the classrooms to become richer learning environments by being devoted to a single subject. Finally, this change would do a lot to help the issue of severely stressed students, because their schedules would not be so busy.

Another important problem with the education system is the influence of business in its leadership. Universities and even primary schools are increasingly being run as for-profit corporations. Although this strategy may have good intentions, the effects are clearly detrimental. When unelected school boards make decisions to cut spending, the quality of student life suffers. When they decide to close schools that are losing money, entire communities suffer. We must come to our senses and end corporate control over education, which is a human right and not a product.