MAX 123 essay 2 education PDF

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essay on the inequalities and issues in the american education system ...

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24 February 2020 Word Count: 912 Education From its beginnings, Free Public education for all was deemed to be a right for every citizen. It was meant to inform people from a young age on how to become democratically engaged citizens while creating more productive and intelligent future generations that would contribute to society. As the education system in America has evolved, so have its inequalities. Companies as well as individuals with influence over educational systems that have economic interests in making education profitable and privatized have separated children based on class, academic performance, and race which has created systematic educational inequality.Public Education is an critical feature of American Democracy, and alternatives such as charter or private schools which don't allow for parents or teachers to partake in any decisions that have to do with the educational process takes a public service out of the public's control and is inherently not democratic. Public education has always been key for Democracy, as it was intended to support and nurture the minds of those who wouldn’t otherwise have the resources to better themselves through education. There are many success stories of young adults making it out of Urban areas, getting college scholarships, and going on to lead successful lives. These are the success stories that people gravitate towards, but unfortunately these stories only make up for a small majority of the students that overcome the obstacles of attending underfunded urban or rural schoolsthat have little local funding, underqualified teachers, poor safety, and no accessibility for handicapped students. The biggest issue with the Privatization of education, a proposed solution

to the aforementioned problems, is how exclusionary it is allowed to be. Private schools can exclude students who don’t meet high academic standards and enforce “zero-tolerance” policies that can expel students for infractions as minor as bringing a pair of nail clippers to school (ACLU, 3). The monetization of education has gone too far, to the point where it is severely inhibiting the equal opportunities that every child in America is supposed to have. S  everal groups are to blame for this issue, all acting under the guise of promoting education while having economically charged ulterior motives. Nongovernmental organizations have continually made decisions that advance their agenda while negatively impacting those seeking education such as developing the common core, which is a uniform set of standards that do not account for the individual needs of students(Hursh, 1). These organizations also believe that teachers should not unionize or be tenured, which doesn’t account for the fact that inexperienced teachers lack the resources to deal with issues as they arise and are far less motivated to do their jobs well due to the lack of funding that pays their wages. “This is a political vision of a very different sort, which transforms education from a public good to a private good, and from a source of political community to a source of individual opportunity”, says David Labaree, who emphasizes that fact that The biggest players in the educational system today are acting completely out of self interest (Labaree 40). Other proponents of charter schools, or at least the option to choose them, include Milton Friedman, who proposed a voucher system where parents would be refunded their tax paid towards education if they choose to enroll their child in private school. The voucher money would pay for private school, which saves those who want it from “paying for education twice”

(Friedman, 1). W  hile it is in line with democracy to give people the option to choose what kind of educational experience they have, this solution still causes inequality when some citizens are given vastly better opportunities than others based on factors out of their control. Realistically, this proposed voucher system would not fix the issue as a few tax dollars would probably not be enough to pay high private school tuition, which means that families who don’t have the means to pay more for education would have to supplement high tuition with their own money. While charter schools were meant to fix the deep rooted issues in education by“offering the possibility of more socially integrated education based on interest, not race or residence.” they have started to operate more like businesses which can be dangerous (Johnson, 1) . The future of public education looks bleak, as there is no one solution to the deep and long standing issues that contribute to how unequal it is. We are living in a time with a very broken educational system, and there has not yet been one easy solution to fix it. Instead, scholars have suggested that there needs to be a “paradigm shift” on the entire concept of public education, which would include tapping into the creative energies of students and teachers while moving away from the factory, “one size fits all” model of education that has been in use since the Industrial era (Boggs & Kurashige, 1). There needs to be systematic change, which includes support at both the state and federal levels. The current state of education in America looks bleak, as organizations only interested in profit gain more control. There should be much stricter government regulations on the power that companies like Pearson Education and NGOs are given in the Educational field, as education is a public good that should always be in near total public control. By asking questions and reforming the entire purpose of education and the way children learn, America's democracy and its public education system will be much better off....