America, Having the Perfect Schools Has Long

¶ … America, having the perfect schools has long been thought to be the panacea of all our nation's social troubles. If only we could teach our children to master America's social values while still in school, we could produce a population of perfect engineers for our future society. Injustice, racism, poverty, and all the other social illnesses of America would be cured by this new generation of progressive thinkers. The quality of our nation's education system needs to be improved, and President Bush's education reform plan will do just that.

It is obvious that the so-called "progressive" educational approach has failed. The academic knowledge of our children has fallen in comparison to other industrial nations. In an attempt to stem our nation's slide in educational rankings, government expenditures for education have risen dramatically. Every year, billions of taxpayer dollars are poured into the U.S. education system. The government seems to believe that all it has to do is increase this amount year after year, and this will automatically translate into increased learning for our children.

This is a very noble cause; however, it doesn't seem to be working, as we haven't seen the upward improvements that ought to have reflected the extra billions poured into our schools. To rectify the situation, President Bush has come up with his own educational reform plan. The quality of our nation's education system needs to be improved, and President Bush's education reform plan will do just that. John Dewey first introduced progressive education in the early 1900s through the 1930s.

In the 1960s and 1970s, progressive education reemerged onto the American scene (Frase and Streshly 3-4). However, progressive education not only did not fix our nation's social problems, but it hurt our academic achievement, and America's test scores began to fall. The government then dramatically increased the funding of our nation's schools. This, conversely, has not brought our test grades back to the level of the pre-progressive education era. Since taking over the presidency, one of George W. Bush's main goals has been to reform our nation's education system.

His plan outlines a half-a-dozen substantial changes in the U.S. education system, and because of the increased national awareness that something must be changed, analysts believe Bush will get most of the major points in his plan through Congress. The urgency of this issue is that our children are consistently scoring low in comparison to other industrial nations, and America's citizens are getting weary of this problem.

As Herbert Walberg, a research professor of education at the University of Illinois puts it, "We have more money than any of the other affluent countries in the world, and yet we have poor performance. It's not a question of getting more money; it's a question of doing things differently and spending money for things that work rather than on things that don't work" (Jones 6). America's Kindergarten through 12th grade schools are lagging behind most of the industrial nations in the world.

America, the richest nation in the world, cannot seem to keep up with international education standards. The United States has the highest GDP (gross domestic product) in the world, and its GDP per capita is the second highest (web.hhs.se/personal/suzuki/o-English/UnitedStates.html1). The U.S. also spends more money as a percentage of the GDP than the average of the other developed countries reported on (nces.ed.gov//pubs2002/digest2001/ch6.asp 5).

This translates into more money per student then most other countries, and education is the government's second largest activity (Samuelson B6). Therefore, money is obviously not the problem. The problem is the United States' educational teaching methods. Due to the so-called progressive education reform, U.S. schools have backed away from the traditional education focus of core subjects, like mathematics, reading, and the sciences.

As E.D Hirsch says in his book The Schools We Need, "A common core curriculum appears to be the only practical means for achieving universal readiness at each grade level" (Hirsch 231). Instead of focusing on the core subjects, we have tried to turn public schools into an apparatus to cure society's ills. Schools have turned soft in their emphasis to teach self-esteem, confidence, and other perceived social cures.

However, as the authors of the Top Ten Myths in Education puts it, "Feeling good about yourself is a wonderful by-product of learning, not the cause of it...it happens when we achieve, when we do something well (Frase and Streshly 59). America's schools are ranked extremely low on the international scale. The United States of America is number one in so many aspects; even our universities are considered the best in the world, yet we cannot get organized enough to teach our children properly.

It is clear that we have much work to do in the attempt to improve our schools, and only with accountability can we judge our successes in working on this problem. Bush's plan deals with this accountability issue, yet it also instills the flexibility needed for the local governments to tailor their changes to what will work best for them. Bush wants to alter our school systems' focus toward the tried and true core curriculum of mathematics, the sciences, and reading.

His plan instills the kind of competition in our nation's schools that will ensure they are striving to be the best that they can be by expanding charter schools and other parental choices. This will empower America's parents into getting involved and making a difference in their children's education. Bush is working toward smaller classes and schools, and other research-based improvements for our nation's education system. At the same time, he is working to improve the quality of our teachers and their professional development programs.

Bush is trying to even the playing field in order to give disadvantaged students more opportunity to learn and grow. He is also attempting to improve the quality and quantity of computers and other technological learning devices in our schools. Lastly, Bush is not forgetting our immigrant children. He is proposing to upgrade.