Essay On The Importance Of Public Education

The Importance of Public Education Public education is one of the largest investments undertaken by governments worldwide. This causes many to wonder, is it worth it? It turns out, the United States is ranked in the middle of all the top industrial countries when it comes to investing their GDP to public education. This number needs to raise because no other government funded program is more valuable than raising all of our nation’s youth in an educated environment (Mitra 2010). As seen in the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, this issue over the value of an education is largely expressed. Public education provides a cheap and effective platform for all of America’s youth to learn the skills it requires to make it socially and economically in the United States society. Harper Lee’s novel favors the idea that the public education system is corrupt and incomplete. In Maycomb, Scout commonly has troubles with her teacher Miss Caroline, who gets upset because Scout is ahead of her class. Miss Caroline says, “Now you tell your father not to teach you any more. It 's best to begin reading with a fresh mind. You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the damage.”(Lee 22). This is, however, very wrong. Students are encouraged to come to school as prepared …show more content…
These people believe that we have been teaching our youth the wrong things. With the explosive growth in student poverty, teaching things such as trigonometry seem pointless in their eyes. The people suggest that we must have a narrower agenda and address the problems with everyday life (Strauss, 2013). This is however, blatantly wrong. Schooling increases the knowledge students have on a variety of subjects for a reason. It gives kids a variety of pools to pick from when identifying and solving a problem (Mitra, 2010). So by narrowing the curriculum, you are just giving the student a smaller chance of solving