Education: Our future?

In Germany students are required to learn multiple languages while they are in school. Some are required to start learning English by the 3rd- 5th grade.

Some even start learning a second language as young as the first grade.

In high school, we had a foreign exchange student from Germany who could speak multiple languages. I remembered being amazed that she knew more than just English and German. She also knew French and Spanish.

And it wasn’t just some key phrases here and there- she was fluent in all four.

That definitely trumped our measly language and a half. Half- being the Spanish we were “learning” but used so infrequently that we did not retain what we had learned the day before. Not to mention the program as a whole was not up to snuff and wasn’t set up to be taken seriously.

At the moment the school system in the U.S. is not up to par with other countries, and not just when it comes to foreign language.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development did a study in 2007 that ranked countries on how well 15-year-olds were doing in science.

The U.S. came in 29th out of the 57 countries that were surveyed, Finland being at the top. Math as well as science is measured in the survey, but they focused mostly on the science aspect in the 2007 study.

Science is a big contender in the world. It can create jobs with new breakthroughs, and bring cures to such things as cancer.

Wouldn’t it make sense for one of the top countries in the world to have students who were competent in the math and science categories?

Really, science has gotten us very far. From Edison with his light bulb, to NASA coming up with the technology that allowed for the MRI machine to be built.

We have had many scientific breakthroughs and discoveries, but it seems like we are slowing down. Could this have something to do with the U.S. score of only 489 on the science survey? A considerably low score and below the average of 500.

The question is: how do we get American’s serious about education?

President Obama wants to lengthen the school days as well as the school year. An idea that may be less than popular with many children, since they just want to get out as fast as possible. Not to mention it would put an even further strain on the city budgets.

On the White House’s Website it goes in depth into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which shows changes to all level of education including higher education.



One point it makes is that Obama “will push to end the use of ineffective, "off-the-shelf" tests, and support new, state-of-the-art assessment and accountability systems that provide timely and useful information about the learning and progress of individual students.”
Here is a good point. Many “off-the-shelf” tests are not designed to really measure how the individual student is actually doing.

Tests like the SAT.

Another great point it makes is the emphasis it puts on just how important teachers are to the learning process. The International Review of curriculum and Assessment of Frameworks put emphasis on this as well.

An interesting point that was made is that in Germany the curriculum is managed by the teachers and it is there full responsibility. The only thing the government controls is what subjects are to be taught, important things like history, math, science, art, foreign language, and even sport.
Maybe going back to the basics would be helpful to getting students interested in school again and tailoring curriculums to subjects that will serve them well in the future