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Student 1

AP Language and Composition

Mr. Bradley

2 November 2018

Education Reform: Change Comes From Within

Within the United States’ constantly changing society, educational reform has again

become a pertinent issue. A country’s education system is one of the most important factors

influencing the future of its government and economy, meaning it is vital that it is effective and

working in the best way possible. Most schools in America are standardized and stiffly

structured, which is not giving students the skills they need to be successful in a modern society

that values creativity and problem-solving.

The structure of America’s public schools is strict. Too strict, because it is stifling the

students’ abilities to flourish and grow in ways that will benefit them. Having a strictly

controlled and supervised student body is meant to minimize student free time in order to prevent

troublemaking in schools, but “you want them to be places where kids feel as though they can

learn and be supported,” and being overly strict “begins to turn schools into institutions that are

more like prisons” (Anderson). When there is a set time frame for each class, every minute of the

school day accounted for, students will feel trapped, while a relaxed school schedule would

allow students time to pursue their individual interests. Some say that kids would instead use this

time to mess around, but is it not boredom and restlessness that causes kids to get into trouble? If

they were given free time to be more independent and grow their own creativity and passions,

the school would feel less like a restricting, suffocating prison that they need to escape from.
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Another problem that arises from the structure of today’s schools is that not only does it

resemble a prison, but also a factory. Students are grouped by age and move through the

production line, having specific skills added into their brains as they grow, until the finished

product graduates and are dispersed into the world. Our education system, constructed by Horace

Mann, “made sense for the industrial age in which he lived. The factory line was simply the most

efficient way to scale production in general, and the analog factory-model classroom was the

most sensible way to rapidly scale a system of schools. Factories weren't designed to support

personalization. Neither were schools” (Rose). The factory-model classroom worked for a

society revolving around factory labor and farm labor, where education was only meant “to

simply create a tolerant, civilized society” (Rose), but in modern-day America, these jobs have

been replaced by automation, meaning that if citizens want to make a living, they need to look to

careers in engineering and technology. These jobs value individual creativity, meaning that the

factory model of public schools is not giving students what they need to be successful in today’s

society.

A school structure that does not resemble prisons or factories would benefit our education

system immensely. One such structure could be block scheduling, where students meet on

alternating days for fewer more extended class periods, instead of six, seven, or eight periods

every day. Advantages of this technique are that there are fewer classes, “teachers see fewer

students during the day, giving them more time for individualized instruction” (NEA), meaning

that students can retain their individuality instead of becoming a duplicate of the desired product

(NEA). Also, “students have more time for reflection and less information to process over the

course of a school day” , meaning that they have time to pursue their individual interests and
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make the most of their education. This more relaxed structure would be less stress on the student

as well, due to the fact that they get more time in the class and less homework. Some

recognizable flaws to this system would be that this would mean school would have to take up

more of the year in order to give students the same amount of time in the class that they would

have gotten in our current system, but a more meaningful structure might make up for a shorter

amount of time over the course of the year. Also, having classes every other day would break up

the continuity of the subject being taught. However, if students enjoyed what they were learning,

and had free time, they would pursue the topics outside of class. Schools that resemble prisons or

factories are ineffective at giving students what they need to earn a place in the world, due to the

fact that they stifle a student’s individuality and creativity.

Another huge obstacle that America’s students face is standardization. This factor of our

public school system’s curriculum has so many negative impacts, including the fact that “there is

little room for originality or creativity on the part of teachers or students” (Rubin, 94). In the real

world, these characteristics are the most important skills they could get out of an education, but

because teachers tend to “withdraw some of their energy from their courses” and gradually “end

up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only

material that will appear on the next test” (Loewen 1), students miss out on skills such as critical

thinking and problem solving, which go along with creativity. The exact skills that America’s

students are missing out on are necessary to becoming successful in the highly innovative careers

that exist today.

Not to mention, some students do not conform to the specific regulations put in place by

these standards, and do not do well on standardized tests, and therefore are labeled as “at risk.”
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“Labeling students has become an epidemic in our schools” because “labels are limiting- they

conceal more than they reveal” (Ayers 18). Labeling a student with ADD will not help the

student. Instead, it makes them feel as if they are inferior compared to their peers when in reality,

they simply do not respond to the teaching methods being used, or their individual skills are not

represented on a test. Students who do not conform to the standards then miss out on a

meaningful education and will struggle to be successful.

Another negative impact of a standardized curriculum is standardized textbooks. These

textbooks, most often history textbooks, are politicized and biased, and “leave out anything that

might reflect badly upon our national character” (Loewen 2). Textbook companies must cater

their books to the views of the schools that will be using them. Most often, it being the largest

state, this means catering to the views of Texas. One of the biggest inaccuracies present in

textbooks, concerning the Civil War, stems from this fact. The states that supported slavery, and

fought a war over it, including Texas, do not want to acknowledge this and therefore paint their

position in the Civil War as being for “state’s rights.” This incorrect fact is then spread

throughout schools across the country, meaning that students graduate with misconceptions, and

struggle in college. The bias that can be found in history textbooks is usually against minority

groups, who have been mistreated by society at some point in history. The message sent by these

boring, uninspiring books is that “you have a proud heritage. Be all that you can be. After all,

look at what the United States has accomplished.” This becomes “a burden for students of color,

children of working-class parents, girls who notice the dearth of female historical figures, or

members of any group that has not achieved socio-economic success. The optimistic approach

prevents any understanding of failure other than blaming the victim. No wonder children of color
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are alienated” (Loewen 3). Minority students will struggle in classes that utilize standardized

textbooks such as this, because if they are being told that they are not worth a place in a history

book, then how could they feel welcome in the classroom in which they sit? This then leads to

citizens who have been taught that they deserve no place in society, rather than learning things

that will help them to be successful.

With less standardization in curriculums, and less standardized testing, students will be

able to develop skills that will help them to be successful, like learning to formulate their own

answer based on their knowledge, opinions, and experiences, rather than be taught to simply pick

“a,” “b,” “c,” or “d.” Life in the real world is not made up of multiple choice questions, and

students who only know how to memorize and repeat back information will struggle. A method

of accomplishing this is having more free response questions on tests, which will challenge

students. Learning should be based on understanding the big picture and applying it to real world

situations, rather than the memorization of small facts. For example, in history classes,

“textbooks almost never use the present to illuminate the past,” and “conversely, textbooks

seldom use the past to illuminate the present” (Loewen 3). This causes the students to lose

interest in the subject. This, coupled with the bias and inaccuracies found in textbooks, means

that the use of textbooks should be greatly reduced. Classes should focus on including more

primary documents and activities to help students gain a better understanding of the subject.

Teaching students in a way that helps them to develop important skills and a deeper

understanding about the world that they live in cannot be accomplished with the obstruction of

standardization.

With education of the next generation being such an important factor in a country’s
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future, reform is a necessary chore in order to keep the system running smoothly. The current

system in America has many flaws, including the stiff, prison-like school schedules, factory-line

production, and standardization. This endangers the abilities of today’s students to have a

successful career and to keep the country running smoothly, meaning that something must

change.
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Works Cited

Anderson, Melinda D. “When School Feels Like Prison.” ​The Atlantic​, Atlantic Media

Company, 12 Sept. 2016,

www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/09/when-school-feels-like-prison/499556/​.

Ayers, William, and Ryan Alexander-Tanner. ​To Teach: the Journey, in Comics​. Teachers

College Press, 2010.

Loewen, James W. ​Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got

Wrong.​ The New Press, 1995.

NEA Research. “Research Spotlight on Block Scheduling.” ​NEA​, ​www.nea.org/tools/16816.htm​.

Rose, Joel. “How to Break Free of Our 19th-Century Factory-Model Education System.” ​The

Atlantic,​ Atlantic Media Company, 9 May 2012,

www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/how-to-break-free-of-our-19th-century-fa

ctory-model-education-system/256881/​.

Rubin, Daniel, and Christopher Kazanjian. “‘Just Another Brick in the Wall’: Standardization

and the Devaluing of Education.” Steadman, Journal of Curriculum and Instruction for

Rural Practitioners, Vol 5, No 2 (2011), 2011,

www.joci.ecu.edu/index.php/JoCI/article/viewArticle/101​.