Essay on Why Do Schools Need Improvement?

As the great Martin Luther King once said, “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” Individuals are continuously learning on a daily basis and are not focused on lifelong learning, but rather the present grades they earn themselves. All of the sources, such as John Bridgeland, Rong Chen, Gerald Graff, Bob Herbert, and K. Robinson support the basic theory of the need for change in schools. Beginning with the faculty staff and working towards making the students feel like there is a purpose. All of these authors use analytical tactics such as rhetorical appeals, genres, language and tone to simply inform and argue that our schools need improvement.
Why do schools need improvement? Bob Herbert, who was an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, makes this clear by giving an example from his excerpt “Our Schools Must Do Better.” The example is a typical high school kid who is asked who the vice president of the United States of America is. The boy said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know” (Herbert). Knowing the name of the vice president is relevant information that a boy in high school should know. This is trivial, though, when compared to what is happening to the Normandy Collaborative schools. The graduation rate at these schools is 53% (Klein). This school is an all-black school supported by a poor community. Although Normandy Collaborative schools have an…