The shortfalls of the American education system has always been a huge source of frustration throughout my life. Ever since elementary school, I can remember having to deal with teachers who were under prepared or uncaring of the work they were doing. Considering the massive impact teachers have on the future of the nation, it has always bewildered me how much America is not invested in its education system. Additionally, it amazes me how much the education system itself is unwilling to change ancient ideology’s systemic issues that exist within its own the infrastructure. These seemingly harmless flaws in the American education system are collectively harming students, discouraging professionals from becoming teachers, and continue to support a system of oppression while benefiting the wealthy. Sooner or later, this system needs to change. In order to do this, I would like to explore what these systemic issues are, how it affects everyone, and how we might be able to solve these issues.

Systematic Issues

My earliest memory of a teacher making a blatantly obvious mistake was in second grade. Back in elementary school, I was behind in my reading skills. Throughout my primary education, I had a tutor to help me read and develop social skills. These tutoring sessions happened on Thursdays where I would be taken out of a class to practice reading. One day, after I came back from a tutoring session, I saw my teacher scolding the class. Everyone in the class was being forced to write letters of apologies because a couple of classmates “acted out” when we had a substitute teacher the prior week. The teacher told me to write a letter of apology even though I had never been present for the incident. I didn’t even know what I was apologizing for.

There are multiple issues with this whole situation. First, the reaction of the school was terrible. If a student ever “acts out,” the first response should never be punishment. Assuming a child is causing a ruckus just because they have bad behavior is ludicrous. Second, punishing a class for actions of others is toxic. This does not “teach” any good behavior and only heightens anger and sets up the students who caused the incident as prime targets for bullying or harassment. Third, pulling in a student that was removed from the situation (for example, myself) and forcing them to apologize for something they didn’t do is an abuse of power and will only make that student feel worse or less confident in their abilities.

This is just one example of some major issues, but the American education system is ripe with even bigger problems. There are countless systems set up to make education worse. For example, judging teachers’ performance based off of standardized tests, teaching students racist or incorrect information and ideologies, lack of resources, predetermined and standardized curriculum, methods of punishment, industrial age schedule structures, and lack of flexibility in accreditation are just a few of the major issues.

Effects of Flaws in the American Education System

It would be impossible to list everything wrong with the American education system within one post, but I can sum up the overall effects it has on students, faculty, and staff. Mainly, there are three things that seem to culminate from the broken system: lack of autonomy for teachers, barriers for students’ learning, and few life skills being taught and learned. Let’s tackle each topic separately.

The first may be one of the largest issues, as teachers who cannot control what they teach in a classroom can cause a myriad of other issues intentionally or unintentionally. When a teacher is forced to teach a certain curriculum and cannot deviate or improve that curriculum the students can tell. Teachers might feel less motivated to teach a curriculum, especially if it is railroaded into talking about topics that are harmful or useless. The fact that the New England Common Assessment Program was still asking practice questions about the date of the moon landing in 2016 shows how white-centrist and useless the information was. Even John Oliver back in 2015 covered the issue of standardized testing in his episode Standardized Testing which highlighted a ridiculous question about a talking pineapple. If teachers are catering their curriculum to these tests so they can continue to teach, the focus of their job suddenly shifts to the teacher and not to the students. I do believe that no education system will work if the main objective of the system is to focus on teachers and privatized companies that profit off of public schools. How could a student possibly be motivated to work when they are literally studying to interpret poorly worded standardized test questions?

The second issue only highlights the long lasting effects of teachers not being able to improve on a curriculum. Obviously, a lack of autonomy for any job makes things more stressful. The teacher, being the main speaker in any classroom, should not be more stressed than the students are. If a teacher doesn’t have the stable life they need, it will be even harder to understand the circumstances that students may be coming from. The result is students walking into a stressful environment every day, having a lack of counseling resources to handle that stress, and no authority figure to sympathize with potentially stressful circumstances at home. These double-standards aren’t held at a higher education level, and they should not be tolerated at a secondary education level either. Colleges often encourage students who are really struggling with mental health to not apply to college as it’s hard to learn when you are stressed out of your mind. This ideology shouldn’t only apply to higher education. High school, middle school, and even elementary school can be very stressful for a student. Students need support not just for professional development, but also help in discovering who they are. If the American education system doesn’t address societal issues, it is making a statement that it does not care about anything but the professional work it is squeezing out of students. That ideology in itself is setting up students for failure.

The third issue also revolves around curriculum. When classes are being taught that won’t help a student succeed in life after secondary education finishes, there is a clear disconnect between the priority of many students and the school. Not everyone wishes to go to college. Not everyone can go to college. If twelve years of schooling can’t fit in required finance, home education, and basic life skills classes, then there is something wrong with the current system. The fact that I have to relearn American history because so many primary school history lessons came from a distorted white perspective is mind boggling. Adam Ruins Everything, a TV show, has highlighted these historical discrepancies such as the Midnight Ride of Paul Revere because there is an obvious bias built into American education. Believe it or not, students do pick up on how impractical and one-sided many lessons are. Student engagement would undeniably improve if it was easy to see the inherent value of attending going school. Unfortunately today, that is not the case.

Solving Systematic Issues in American Education

Many of the statements in this post are sweeping generalizations of all schools in America. It is important to note there are exceptions. Some schools are already moving to correct these issues. Other schools are already far ahead of even the things mentioned in this post. On the other hand, it is also true that many schools are stuck in the past and have issues that are even worse than what was mentioned here. The fact that some schools are still struggling in modern day society is unacceptable.

With a fragmented system such as the one in the US, it is insanely difficult to even identify which schools might have these issues. Rather than trying to tackle every problem at the same time, I have been advocating for a system that can identify what schools need help the most, and start there.

The first step to solving these issues is collecting data. It is impossible to help improve infrastructure at a school if you can’t identify the school. A national report on the status of simple things such as access to the internet, median pay of teachers, status of resource availability, or student-teacher-counselor ratios at the school would make this task much easier to solve.

Additionally, creating a national check-in test that only tests the most basic skill levels could help identify which schools might need more support. This was the main intent of the No Child Left Behind legislation, but unfortunately an update to the legislation years later allowed private companies to profit off of public schools. A national check-in test created by teachers across the nation could feed the federal government the information it needs to identify which schools need support.

With these two pieces of data, the federal government could then hire trained professionals to go to these schools, audit them, and make long-lasting projects to improve the education system of each individual school. (Yes, I do suggest here that throwing money at schools and hoping that will solve all their issues is also a bad idea. We need trained professionals to improve infrastructure, not a bigger budget with no guidance.) There is no one blanket-solution that could solve each individual school; cultures and demographics vary too widely.

The End Result

This solution is simplified. Obviously more work would be needed to define how this improvement process would actually work, but it is the start to something that could give America’s education system a huge boost that it needs. Rather than allocating funds to schools based off of standardized test performance, it could offer trained professionals to audit each school individually and help from the ground up. This doesn’t solve every issue mentioned above, but I believe it is a great start to getting us near the road of success that we have all strayed so far away from.