A bland ringing sounds and all students stand in unison to move towards the door. They shuffle down the hallway past dozens of other students with the same deadened and tired look in their eyes. The students file into a class and slide into neat rows of desks to restart the same monotonous routine of notes frantically copied off a screen, worksheets, and bubbled-in answers. This is a picture of our nation’s school systems. This system was designed decades ago and has only become more and more fixated despite the constantly changing outside world. We need to move beyond many of the shortcomings of our dated school system such as the fixation and inflexibility of standardized testing and the “track” system and move instead towards a more innovative
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Many students weren’t expected to graduate or if they did they would simply go into blue-collar jobs in the workforce. This explains the system of tracking of tracking and the almost factory like atmosphere of our schools. Only the highest level of kids were expected to go to college and therefore they were, and still are, provided with the most advanced classes and the best teachers. In this day and age so many more kids will go to college and our economy is shifting to one of far more specialized, or “white collar” jobs. Along with this change should come a similar change in the design of our schools. Putting kids on the “fast” track is all well and good for them because they are sent off with confidence in themselves and their education. But for those on lower tracks, it hits hard to be labeled by those who are supposed to be your biggest motivators in your education as slower or “stupider”. Once you have been directed down a lower track it’s nearly impossible to ever catch up with those on the faster track due the lower quality of your education and the mental wall that the administration has built between you and your educational confidence. Poor teachers are shunted to the side into classrooms of lower performing students
Many students weren’t expected to graduate or if they did they would simply go into blue-collar jobs in the workforce. This explains the system of tracking of tracking and the almost factory like atmosphere of our schools. Only the highest level of kids were expected to go to college and therefore they were, and still are, provided with the most advanced classes and the best teachers. In this day and age so many more kids will go to college and our economy is shifting to one of far more specialized, or “white collar” jobs. Along with this change should come a similar change in the design of our schools. Putting kids on the “fast” track is all well and good for them because they are sent off with confidence in themselves and their education. But for those on lower tracks, it hits hard to be labeled by those who are supposed to be your biggest motivators in your education as slower or “stupider”. Once you have been directed down a lower track it’s nearly impossible to ever catch up with those on the faster track due the lower quality of your education and the mental wall that the administration has built between you and your educational confidence. Poor teachers are shunted to the side into classrooms of lower performing students