The Future of Our Educational System
I try not to be negative about things that haven’t happened yet or what could be considered beyond my control. But the more I see of our educational system, the more afraid I am of where it is headed. Hearing from parents, teachers, and students, I’m getting the impression that our educational system is on the road to complete disaster.
The Current State
In reviewing our current educational system, we could write several large books on it and still think of more to say on it. There are issues everyone agrees with and some that are highly contested. But I think we all can agree that the system needs to be fixed and not in the way the government is trying to fix it. The truth is that it seems to only be getting worse.
“According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (2017), only 25 percent of American 12th grade students are proficient in math, 22 percent are proficient in science, and 12 percent are proficient in U. S. history.” (McAllister https://www.cato.org/cato-journal/winter-2018/teachers-perspective-whats-wrong-our-schools#nonconceptual-mentality) This report was only a few years ago. Nothing has changed in that time period unless we note that it is probably worse.
Only 12% are proficient in the history of their own country! 12%! I can believe that. I recently worked with a young man who had graduated from high school in 2017. It depressed me when he spoke and revealed how little he knew of the world. In a conversation, I referenced Jesse James. At the worst, I expected him to think I meant the reality show star. Nope. He had never heard the name and never knew there was a famous American outlaw with that name. In fact, he knew very little of anything those of us older than twenty years of age would talk about. He was completely lost.
Knowing the exact date of the Boston Massacre or who was the Vice-Presidential candidate that lost the election of 1860 are not included in the “proficient” area of history. Proficient knowledge of U.S. history is actually very high level and can be rather grey in definition. I found a good description that explains what a high school graduate proficient in history should know.
Twelfth-grade students performing at the NAEP Proficient level should understand particular…
