Robert Sorensen Professor Edmunds English 1A MW 4pm Writing Assignment 1 High School: Out With the Old and In With the New When most people think about high school, they think about fun times with no responsibility. Rarely does someone look back and think that it played a key role in preparing them for college and the rigors of the real world. There is an epidemic failure to properly prepare high school students because of the current system in which they are enrolled.Teachers are failing to teach, Parents are failing to motivate, and students are taking no responsibility or accountability for their own actions. Too loose freedom, too much emphasis on personality development, and its side effects are often the loss of moral restraint. The educational foundation of our society has been eroded to the point of endangering the future of our country and its inhabitants.
High school, in the form that it is in today, should be discarded and we should initiate a new and improved structure.To start with, one of the main issues in the high school system is social segregation and classes amongst the students. What I mean by this is that parents, teachers, and other students often times are partial to the “popular” students because of their athletic skill or charismatic behavior. These are not bad things to have, but does it mean they deserve special treatment? No, in fact, it should be the students that perform in the classroom that should receive such recognition. When we turn these athletes into heroes, we cripple them.
They will go through life thinking that they are better than certain people and they will have not learned the value of hard work upon graduating. High school needs to be more about educating students rather than drooling over athletes with poor academic performances that we excuse because of their raging hormones. In the book, “Bleachers”, Neely Crenshaw is a high school quarterback and a king amongst his peers. From a very young age he was always one cut above the rest. Later in life, he looks back on his high school experience with sadness because he knows that that was as good as it was ever going to get or him.
It was not until he grew old that he realized that the experiences he had in high school did not only leave him unprepared for the tribulations of life but also left him hopelessly wishing he could go back to the best days of his life. This is a perverse way of thinking. High school should not be the highlight of someone’s life, but rather a preparatory stepping stone to bigger and better accomplishments. Another reason why the current high school system is not making the grade is because of the lack of parental involvement.
When I say parental involvement, I do not mean parents yelling at teachers for not giving their child a grade that he or she did not earn. What I mean is parents motivating their kids to sit down and study. Teachers want this interaction because when students are disciplined at home, they will be disciplined at school as well. Kids usually only misbehave when they think no one is looking or when they think they can get away with it. If parents make sure that neither of those two things happens, then the child will not act out in the first place. High school students are very rarely self-starters.
Almost in every situation that involves a teenager and schooling, they are going to need a little extra encouragement in order to stay on top of their assignments. The earlier in a child’s educational process parent involvement begins, the more powerful the effects. The most effective forms of parent involvement are those, which engage parents in working directly with their children on learning activities at home. Parents must be involved in order for any educational system to work.
On the other hand, some may say that the current system in place allows students to develop personality and build a sense of individuality.This is not the purpose of education. A formal education is designed to help intellectuals discover and hone their talents. Moreover, personality traits are not established in a school setting, but are acquired at home watching and learning from their parents. Therefore, High school needs to be more about learning subject matter, not learning about who you are. The last problem I will address in reference to the existing high school format is the lack of reading skills and how it is enabled through grade inflation.
A study in 2005 showed that only a mere fifty-one percent of high school students that take the ACT are actually capable of reading at college level (A1). We would love to give all the blame to the students, but the truth is, it’s the teachers who are also partially to blame. Teachers sometimes feel bad for students for any number of reasons and give them a grade that they did not earn. Doing so does not help the students. In fact, this is quite injurious to a child’s educational experience. Grade inflation is the predisposition for grades for equivalent work to increase in a period of time.
It is becoming such a problem that our educational achievements are diminishing in value. Although evidence for grade inflation is insufficient and is sometimes even contradictory, anyone who has been part of the educational process will testify of its validity. Finally, the question of what can we do to restore this fraudulent tyrant that is the high school educational system can be addressed. We can begin by giving students, at the age of 14, the choice to attend high school. No one should force a child, who does not wish to be educated, into a formal education.A student should know by the age of 14 the value of an education and what it can do for their future.
If they are not wise enough to make that decision, then it is their own fault. Next, I would set in new, more difficult criteria for a preparatory educational system that must be complete in order to attend high school. I would also require that all students pass an extensive reading test verifying that they are at or above grade level reading. Following the reading exam, I would ensure to have a safe, disciplined and absolutely drug free environment. Not cooperating with these rules will get you irreversibly expelled.Just these few changes, along with others, would, without a doubt, substantiate a valued educational experience in which the educators instruct and the students learn.
The teachers, students, parents, community leaders, and the superintendents must ascend to a new way of thinking and an improved way of educating. John F. Kennedy said best when he stated, “Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation”(C3).Works Cited ACT Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness In Reading. Iowa City, IA, 2006 (A1) Boyer, Ashley.
“Problems Facing American Education” Volume 2, Number 1 2008. <http://www. nationalforum. com/Electronic%20Journal%20Volumes/Boyer,%20Ashley%20Problems%20Facing%20American%20Education. pdf> Kennedy, John F.
“35th President of the United States. ” <http://en. proverbia. net/citastema. asp? tematica=377> 2009.
(C3) Michigan Department of Education What Research Says About Parent Involvement in Children’s Education. MI, March 2002.
