Ever since its creation, the United States’ public education system has been flawed and its goals have been skewed. In the article titled How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why written by John Tyler Gatto, a former NYC and NY Teacher of the Year; discusses this. Gatto references a book written in 1918 by Alexander Inglis, Principles of Secondary Education, that describes six key functions, that have been a constant basis for public education ever since its publication coinciding with public schools being put into motion. Despite the book’s large impact, most people don’t remember the book and its functions, claiming everything in public education exists to make good people, good citizens and to get each person to reach their personal
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It exists to take advantage of the differences among students in order to find where in society each person would be most efficient. The Principles of Secondary Education author, Alexander Inglis explains that every student has unique interests and abilities, as well as their own tendencies and capacities developed apart from school and ignoring that will only result in failure to the individual and to the society that expects to be provided with students working at their highest efficiency. It is the high school staff’s job to start differentiating the education plans for students because they can’t take every single class and learn everything there is to offer, and even if they could, the kids would end up spending months learning things that they would never use later on in life. The problem with the public education system’s technique is that they are not treating students as individually as they should and are instead deciding where to place us and recommend us based on tests. These tests, such as state tests, SATs and AP exams have identical questions for the thousands or even millions of individual people taking them. There is no respect for individuality in this method, where class plans are based on test scores and basic class grades (English, math, science). With this methodology for education, children with dreams of becoming marine biologists but not so great grades might get a talk with the counselor where they are told to try out an easier option like community college, and the straight-A student planning on being an actress will be pleaded with to go to a good college instead of “wasting her time on a hopeless dream.” Students who have an idea for what they would be happiest doing should get advice on what they have to do to get there and do everything to help them get there, it doesn’t matter if they could choose a much-easier route that would give them
It exists to take advantage of the differences among students in order to find where in society each person would be most efficient. The Principles of Secondary Education author, Alexander Inglis explains that every student has unique interests and abilities, as well as their own tendencies and capacities developed apart from school and ignoring that will only result in failure to the individual and to the society that expects to be provided with students working at their highest efficiency. It is the high school staff’s job to start differentiating the education plans for students because they can’t take every single class and learn everything there is to offer, and even if they could, the kids would end up spending months learning things that they would never use later on in life. The problem with the public education system’s technique is that they are not treating students as individually as they should and are instead deciding where to place us and recommend us based on tests. These tests, such as state tests, SATs and AP exams have identical questions for the thousands or even millions of individual people taking them. There is no respect for individuality in this method, where class plans are based on test scores and basic class grades (English, math, science). With this methodology for education, children with dreams of becoming marine biologists but not so great grades might get a talk with the counselor where they are told to try out an easier option like community college, and the straight-A student planning on being an actress will be pleaded with to go to a good college instead of “wasting her time on a hopeless dream.” Students who have an idea for what they would be happiest doing should get advice on what they have to do to get there and do everything to help them get there, it doesn’t matter if they could choose a much-easier route that would give them