Persuasive Essay On Education

The United States’ system of education has not changed in a substantial amount of time. For years now, students have been given facts, rules, or formulas and told to memorize them, whether or not they actually understood them is anyone’s guess. As long as students were able to memorize said fact, rule, or formula and recite it when asked they could easily pass the class. They may have passed the class, but at the end of the year, what has the student retained? Nothing. It is no longer of use to them so they forget about it and if they are asked the next year for it, they have no answer. This is one thing that occurred to me on the first day of ninth grade. For the starter, in my geometry class, I was told to solve a system of equations which is a topic that was covered the year prior. The year prior, when being able to solve that was necessary to “survive,” I had mastered it, but then the school year ended and I was no longer in need of it so I forgot about it. When I was then asked to do it again, I was completely lost. This is what happens to most students in this country, especially when it comes to the subject of mathematics. The United States is in grave need of radical education reform because simply memorizing a bunch of stuff that the teacher tells you, does not cut it anymore. Students are being turned …show more content…
With the rapid advancements in technology, some students will not be able to keep up because once they’ve graduated from college, the knowledge that they memorized may be outdated and now useless. However, if students were taught to approach problems with an open mind and not just the algorithm or set of instructions they were taught, said student may be able to use his/her prior knowledge to fill in the gaps of the new knowledge that was not taught or even touched on by the teacher. They must learn to think