A colleague of mine sent me the following link Race to Nowhere Trailer to watch the trailer for the documentary “Race to Nowhere”. While watching the trailer, I saw some issues that have come up in recent discourse with higher education and K-12 professionals regarding pressures placed on K-12 and especially 7th-12th grade students by the government and colleges to be a “near perfect” student in order to succeed in an education system that is broken and yields very little promises for a successful future upon completing college….Though I have been discussing and debating my beliefs and thoughts regarding these issues frequently for the last couple of years, I wanted to put this out there to see what others think…
Is our education system in the country truly broken? If so, why? If not, why not? Is the federal or state government responsible for the improvements? What part does higher education (colleges) play? If you have some thoughts, please share….
Wow, first thing right off, the early developing years pre-school is getting short shrift with parent(s) either missing or missing in action as too busy to prepare a child for school. Either way, it takes a tribe to raise a child since economically Mom or Dad cannot afford to spend the quality time needed. Then the teacher is overwhelmed raising children rather than educating them. So, maybe school needs to start at a younger age, with more emphasis on becoming a well adjusted human being in a nurturing environment? I dunno, thinking out loud here. I’ve love to read of the thoughts of others. 🙂 Ric
I agree. We need to education children much earlier, but the question is how do we make this happen when states are constantly attempting to or exceeding in cutting funding for pre-school, head start, and other public education programs? Also, I agree with what you said about teachers spending too much time “raising students”. The discipline piece must start from home. By the time children attend school, they simply need to know “how to behave” in class. On the other hand, we do not to take into consideration the influence of our media, technology and varying parenting techniques and how these affect a young person’s ability to “sit still” and learn. Pedagogy must change. We have to assess where students are and meet them halfway. This top down approach to educational standards (standardized testing) and practices needs to seriously be reconsidered.