Education - Forgetting the Fundamentals
Education: Forgetting the Fundamentals Why does America, whose colleges are considered some of the best in the world, fall so far behind when it comes to a comparison for lower education? I find many areas in modern education to be fundamental for a person to be considered educated which include reading, writing, mathematical aptitude, and the ability to speak with an advanced vocabulary. In America we take these skills for granted and do not always comprehend their importance, but when viewing other cultures or even our young children, we come to understand the difference between a basic education and the lack thereof. As a parent, I have the chance to watch my daughter and see education not as a reflection of my school history, but as an evolving and complex process. I can not merely teach her the words necessary to complete a sentence and consider her a good speaker. When looking at her lack of the basic skills that will be needed later in life, only then can I truly appreciate my education. As a society, we Americans tend to take for granted the education that is given to us freely by the constitution, but the basics are the ideas that set us apart from any other species on this planet.
The loss of detail is astounding and the skills that would be taught for comprehension are lost in these flashy simple minded versions of these literary classics. The American K-12 system can be fixed, but it will take more than just making corrections in the school. Whether looking at a culture that may trade sheep for the hand of a woman or looking at the common blue collar worker paying bills and working for an hourly wage, math is everywhere. I find myself constantly having to explain complex words over again in simple words because many lack this simple skill. I find this to be a key reason among my peers for misunderstanding or not comprehending a reading assignment. The school systems have even relaxed the necessity of reading comprehension in the wake of the visual media available today. We can get book on tape, we have computers that correct our writing skills, and we have access to all kinds of opinions and theories regarding different ideas. But how can we accept this idea and still be shocked when a person gives us incorrect change? We judge these people for their failings and assume a lack of education on their part, never considering the concepts that are currently upheld in our own schools. We could wake up and find that America has become uneducated. The last vocabulary test I remember taking was in the 6th grade. So it comes as no surprise to find myself in college with other students who have not read a book unless it was mandatory. Through TV we can get our news, we can use the internet to research different opinions, and we can even plagiarize if all else fails. Gelernter refers to the view point of calculators in school and their effects on one particular elementary schools test scores, "scores on computation tests have dropped 10 percent. The simple concept of understanding the written word of a story is rapidly dying in a world of movies that can rap up a story in less than two hours.
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