A Quick Thought On America's Education System

A new movie is coming out titled Waiting For Superman. The movie is about how America's education system is "failing our children." And once again everyone in America who does not work in education or affiliated with working in education is banging the drum on how broken our education system is. Of course the cliches come out on how we are failing "The children." Once again the blame is being put on not having good enough teachers, teachers unions that have too much power and the old standby of not enough computers being in school. Actually I don't know if this reason is still being used however there was a really don't know if they are saying this however there was a good 15 year period where this reason was used for how much our education system was "failing the children" So everyone became convinced more computers would make smarter kids. Anyway sorry for the that off subject tangent.

So my point is better teachers, schools, computers, dissolving the teachers unions etc. WILL NOT MAKE AMERICAN CHILDREN SMARTER OR BETTER STUDENTS, it will simply be politicians using a pointless rallying cry to get cheap votes, really people that's all that it is.

I worked in public schools for two years. I taught kindergarten through 9th grade and the reason none of the above will work is that most American Kids do not want to learn! Mainly because XBox 360, Facebook, The Internets, Cartoon Network, Toys etc. are all about 10,000 times more exciting and entertaining than academic material to 95% of kids ages 5 to 19. Sorry people but that is the cold, painful truth. Most kids outside of the overachievers and highly motivated are going to prefer punching hookers and running over pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto over Long Division, that's human nature and there isn't much we can do to change it without seriously going medieval on everyone 6 to 18 in America.

The only thing that is going to make American Children better student is to have American Parents holding there kids accountable for studying and doing there homework. This may mean you have to be the fun police and take away your kids video games, laptop, cell phone but it is what it is. Outside of hiring School Police that can beat and starve children into learning(this wouldn't go over well) The American School system will continue to fall short. This is just my opinion but I'm pretty sure I'm 99% right on this.