Essay on Education in the States – it is Time to Change the Vector
In the modern society with the rapid development of life and extreme high speed of changes education plays a crucial role because it allows to develop adoptive mechanisms, find your place, find and develop your hidden talents and capacities. So, education should be available for every individual. There are a lot of questions and doubts considering the level of education, its accents and forms, but it is obvious that it should be for all people. To my mind, every person has the right to the same kind of education and various tests and examinations will show whether a particular kind of education passes him/her or not. The next question is who should take responsibility for education. It is not fair to put this responsibility on the individual because it would be not his/her responsibility, but his/her parents’. It depends on their level of income and other factors and at this point the question of inequality arises: some rich parents may allow the education for their child and poor representatives deprive their children of it. The most logical answer to this social inequality would be federal provision. The government should develop common economic, political and cultural course of the country and implement corresponding educational programs. Students know the professional demand and governmental needs and have a kind of guarantee to be useful and successful after getting a diploma. “Education is supposed to prepare future citizens—that is, to equip them with the necessary skills, knowledge, attitudes, and perspectives to live a prosperous and happy life as well as to perform responsibilities required of them as citizens of a society” (Zhao, 2009, p.13). However, federal responsibility has negative consequences, as well. The government does not care about creative abilities and imagination much. It has a declination to standardization: a particular type of worker is required and the government gives a requirement for such a worker. In this way person’s hidden talents, his/her creativity and imagination go aside and Ken Robinson, a famous educational expert, in his lecture Changing Education Paradigms speaks about this problem of modern education. Traditional education concentrates on the final product and material effectiveness – the government needs the statistics of high economic development. However, it is time to realize for the United States that further progress and development is not in the quantity and quality of existing products and services, it is in innovations. Innovations, in their turn, may be developed and implemented only by creative individuals and “divergent” thinking, as Robinson calls it.
On the one hand, American government guarantees all its citizens the right for free and equal education, as it was proclaimed in the Equal Education Opportunities Act of 1974. In my opinion, it is a positive change in the provision of education on the federal level. There was created the National Institute of Education to control the educational process in the States and improve the level of education. Moreover, to guarantee equal opportunities for all citizens including people with disabilities The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (20 U.S.C. §§ 1400 et seq) was signed and it is also a very important and necessary step in the educational sphere.
On the other hand, educational system of the United States requires fundamental reformation, and the faster it will be done, the more visible the results will be. Standardization of education resulted in the development of thousands of tests in every discipline, however, these tests allow to check only factual knowledge, not creative talents. Moreover, even high scores in tests and economic growth of the country do not have direct dependence. “In the face of such evidence, we can do more than reject the widely held hypothesis that high test scores lead to national success in the future. We can also hypothesize that high test scores are damaging to nations. That the U.S. comes out on top in national success in 74% of the comparisons with higher-scoring nations is statistically significant (p <.0001, binomial test)” (Baker, 2007, p. 103). So, standardization of the educational process which used to be so actual in the 20th century does not prove to be effective nowadays.
Development of critical thinking and creativity should become the main vector of the educational policy in the states. It presumes more freedom for the individual in the learning process, the teacher becomes more an observer who directs the student to a minimal point and creates appropriate condition for the development of personality and individuality. Despite the fact that it may seem risky, it is worth trying if the focus of attention is the development of personality in the American society. Robinson in his lecture gives a provoking statistics: 98% of children up to five years old have excellent creative capacity and it minimizes with the flow of time under the influence of the standardized educational system.
So, accent on creativity, critical thinking and diversity should become the priority for the educational reform not only on the local level but on the federal level, first of all. American nation, as well as others, has so many talented and unique personalities that they deserve chances for the development of their abilities and it will contribute to the economy and the country in general in the nearest future.
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