Everyday Canvas

My Two Cents on Today's Schooling

Prompt:
This question may not directly affect you.. but it may affect your children, grandchildren, or siblings. If not you do have the non-prompt option.
What do you think of a two-tiered system. Is it the solution to our education woes?
Were you told college was the only solution to a good career or were you told that a trade was more important?
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I don’t have to have someone who is directly affected by the situation concerning the education of children in this country to care about education, as I have been a teacher despite for a very short time.

The theory is that, according to some loudmouths, charter schools promote a two-tiered system with the lower tier being taught much less than the upper one. In our community, the charter school accepts highly intelligent, hard-working students and it is a very successful school. This has nothing to do with the general population of students.

Granted, that shouldn’t take away from the rest of the schools, but those other schools usually do little else, besides teaching the basics and test-taking. Shouldn't all schools strive to raise their students to the best of their abilities? In this, charter schools are not to blame, but the culprit here is the entire system that has taken away the means of discipline from the parents and better teachers and given it to a broken machine comprised of faulty thinking, passe ideas, and useless innovations put in place by the administrators and school boards.

Charter schools, from what I have observed, are at least rescuing a handful of students. If all schools were to be run like a charter school with dedicated, better-educated, and much better paid teachers, backed up by a strict discipline by the school administrations, there would be no need for a two-tiered system, even if charter schools still existed.

There still are many dedicated, well-educated teachers around who are burning out because of mismanagement. If the teacher burn-out is not addressed soon, we won’t even have those dedicated professionals to save at least a few more children.

As to college or the learning of a trade goes, it should totally depend on the students’ abilities. College graduates nowadays don’t find jobs, and moreover, are loaded with student loan payments. Is it worth it? I don’t think so. One of my sons mentions only his high school but does not put up his college attendances on his Facebook page in order to keep his present job, so he won’t be turned away for being overqualified. This makes me appreciate the trade schools greatly. What good is a college education for, if one can’t make a decent living with a college degree?

Moreover, present-day high-schools boast with the numbers of students they send to higher education; a few even are padding the test scores and giving fattened recommendations to colleges for receiving government funds. Then, the politicians who run for office promise to ask for extra money for schools. What for?

No money on earth will fix this broken system. Unless some hero comes around and changes the entire situation, which doesn’t seem likely because, my guess is, there are many administrators and people with other motives than educating children, in spite of the few good teachers who are stuck in the wheels of a not-so-merry-go-round of teaching methods.

If I were a parent and had to choose, in today’s atmosphere of schools, I would opt for homeschooling my children in some way, even if it would be a very difficult thing to do.