American education

American Education

You've probably already figured out (or know from my IP trace, w/e) that I'm an American. So my anonymity just dropped down from the entire English-speaking internet-equipped population of the world, to the " " of America. I'm willing to make that sacrifice in order to publish this commentary, because its something I feel very strongly about.

Low-potential kids. Stupid, learning disabled, developmentally delayed, whatever you want to call them, they exist. Its bad enough that we teach all kids of the same age the same material, in the same order, and (within a class) at the same pace, despite drastic differences in speeds of knowledge and skill acquisition. Example, despite being a very intelligent and academically talented person myself, it would still take me a few extra weeks to absorb all the information that a college class might try to condense into a semester. I'm slow, I own it, and I'm lucky that I have the ability to cope with that disadvantage. Others don't.

But what's worse, is that we are teaching all children, from the stupidest to the smartest, advanced academic material. My key gripe is with chemistry, but this can be easily applied to most maths, essay writing, almost everything students do in high school.
Why is this? Because we're trying to send them all to college. Bollox. College is not the place for everyone. It was the place for me. Huzzah. But when people who went to college come into political power and start making the assumptions that everyone can go to college, shit goes downhill fast.
Point is, lots of these kids are not going to go to college, and if they are, they're probably not going to use the calculus and chemistry and literary analysis skills that they all suffered through in high school. And for most, when they get to working, even with a college degree, that knowledge and those skills are even less relevant!
So why are we wasting all this time and all these resources to teach kids things that they will never use and certainly not remember, meanwhile there are clear educational deficits about things like filing your taxes, or making a budget, or proper nutrition, or fixing your car, skills of everyday life for the masses that are not being covered? Common issues like how to deal with the police, or what drugs can do to your body, are skimmed over if they are addressed at all, while an entire year is devoted to the study of atoms alone.

American education needs to make a reassessment of its utility. We know that a lot of these kids are not going to become chemists. But its taught for the purpose of finding and encouraging kids who do have the talent to go to college and pursue a scientific career, for the benefit of the country at large (since that's where much of the educational funding is coming from). So basically, these exhaustive academic classes are being used like talent-scouting, or weeding, as it were. And I swear the more analytic classes like calculus are just a method for colleges to measure your brain-power; they don't actually care if you do calculus ever again, so long as you demonstrate the ability to learn it.

We do this, sacrificing the masses at the altar of international competition, scientific progress, and - lets be real here - the big hope of the federal government is that we will produce scientists that build weapons. Perhaps this drive is left over from our competition with Russia, I don't know. But from a political philosophy approach, it isn't right at all.