Obviously I don't have the answers to what would fix the education system in this country, and if I did I doubt anyone of significance would listen to me. But I can point to obvious problems that the system has from personal experience. I grew up in East Texas, mostly in poor white trash trailer parks and took the school bus to public schools from K-12. Due to finances my family moved a lot and I attended many schools throughout my student career including four different high schools. Whether large or small I usually ended up in a poor school in a poor neighborhood and they had much in common. For one is class size. Classes are crammed full of students with very little in the way of supplies and textbooks to accommodate each student. Schools would run a block schedule to alleviate the daily course load but you still had young and untested teachers trying to reign in an army of young kids and/or adolescents. In fact my teachers growing up were usually either a young inexperienced teacher fresh out of school or an elderly teacher who was either to tired or to lazy to teach the students who didn't want to learn. (Perhaps they grew weary of trying to reach the children who didn't try?) Teachers had a set course plan that they would follow but we were never able to fit it all into the semesters. Many teachers would use the "death by PowerPoint" method and have students just write out everything they would need to know for tests and exams.
One thing that really sticks out for me was the attitude that if the student didn't want to learn, then the teacher wasn't going to waste their effort. Teachers would focus on those one or two go-getters with future college written all over them and ignore many of the students that required more attention. I for one had trouble studying and a very short attention span so keeping up with the class was always hard for me. That coupled with my family constantly moving in the middle of the school year so I had to catch up to what a new class was covering. Very few teachers took the time to get me up to speed or facilitate my visual learning style. If your individual learning style didn't fit with that teacher's particular teaching style then you were S.O.L. (s*** out of luck).
I don't want to give the idea that every teacher I had was bad. In fact I had many great teachers growing up that were passionate, took the time to help me master the material, and saw potential in me when I did not. I just think that schools, poor schools in particular, need to either root out bad teachers, provide them with better training, or a bit of both. (http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21625653-american-teachers-need-more-money-training-feedback-collaboration-mentoring-and) I am not big on letting the Federal Government handle every single social problem in this country and am a firm believer in letting State governments handle their issues, but education is one of those things that impacts us as an entire country. It is what will either ensure or doom the future of this great nation. We need to focus on providing our schools, ALL of our schools with the right equipment, staff, and resources required to help our young generation grow to keep up and compete with those of other nations. Personally I say scrap the overly funded private schools and funnel that money into public education. In truth we need school reform. Not the "school reforms" that Democrat and Republican politicians have been doling out but real school reform. I'm talking an Education Revolution. This country cannot continue to complete on a Global scale in terms of economics, business, technology, etc. if the literacy rate of our kids continues to fall. If we keep producing under-educated Americans.
A special note I would like to add here is on my philosophy of education. Obviously children must learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are tools created to communicate and operate in the modern world. What I mean is the goal of education. What is the purpose of it. I don't think that education extends to just memorizing lines of text, dates, and names or solving mathematical formulas. Yes these help with critical thinking but what about creative thinking? I believe that education must include experiences. Experiences that show us knew things, new ideas, and new methods of understanding. I believe we need to expose ourselves to everything this world has to offer. That is how you grow as a human being. (http://www.lotc.org.uk/) Learn a new language, learn to play an instrument, take a martial arts course, climb a mountain, visit a foreign country, take an improv class, the list goes on. Really it is about connecting to the world we live in as a whole and those we share it with. There is something to be said about reading all about the Galapagos Islands compared to living there for a month. The tactile responses from seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting is in itself a valuable learning experience that we shouldn't miss out on. Most of all, the experience of making connections with other people is a rich opportunity that helps us to grow.
(http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/oct10/vol52/num10/Learning-Outside-the-Classroom.aspx)
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