American School System

Essay by polish00A, April 2005

download word file, 5 pages 4.3

Downloaded 75 times

Imagine taking a time machine back to one's high school years. Visions of teenagers walking through cramped halls to their classes and sitting in incredibly unergonomic chairs come to mind. High school, as some say "Are the best years of your life", but quite a few people have issue with that statement. Many people will not deny that high school (and the American education system at large) does not have its fair share of problems. To not accept that fact would be pure naïveté. Take for example the increased lag between Americans in the subject areas of science and math relative to many industrialized nations. Another problem concerning the American high school system is the high drop-out rate among teenagers disillusioned with the ducational system, who are also known as "burnouts" who are so bored in the current system as to become delinquents and remove themselves from schoo (Gaines, 64 - 66).

Some Europeans also say that American teenagers are some of the most coddled and irresponsible young adults on the planet, and that the American educational system does nothing to prepare teenagers for living in the "adult" society. The signs are obvious, the American high school is a fatally flawed concept, and needs to be reworked in order for American youth to get the education that they deserve.

There is no argument regarding the fact that the American school system has inadequacies, but where exactly those issues are and how they should be solved is another discussion altogether. Theodore Sizer, Leon Botstein, and Nicholas LeMann all have their own viewpoints as what is wrong with high school, or the educational system as a whole. Each writer also gives different solutions as to the problems that they percieve in the American high school system. While the arguments of Sizer...