Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

Discuss the shortcomings of elementary and/or secondary education in the United States.   What changes would you recommend in order to improve our education system?

The changes that I would strongly recommend would be the following: Reducing class sizes and overcrowding in classrooms. For instances, some classes can take up to five hundred students at once. I believe this type of environment can create distraction and have an considerable impact in their grades as a whole. Education in the United States is not effective as it should be, because of the way issues of political and social differences have infiltrated educational policy and decision-making, students are not being offered a sound way of dealing with diversity or understanding how to manage differences. In addition, in the midst of more large scale debates centering upon sociopolitical questions, there are more concrete problems that are not being dealt with such as the issue of cheating in schools and even the imbalance and potential unfairness of the grading system. The United States system of education is focused more in the “future of education” then focusing on the areas of true and immediate significant importance and value, time is being wasted by infighting and indecision. One of the problems with the American education system is that it has yet to form a consensus about the role of religion in the classroom. While this is not a statement meant to argue whether or not religion has a valid place in the public schools, it is fair to state that this is certainly an area of contention as opposing sides attempt to standardize how religion is treated, particularly in textbooks. Because of a lack of agreement, proponents on both sides use litigation and other actions to determine religion’s status in schools and this has caused textbook publishers and other educational entities to have to take a dramatic stance. For instance, some argue that the efforts to stay away from this debate “has pushed textbook publishers to excise religion altogether, even from history class. It is not just the teaching of religion that has become taboo, but it is the teaching of religion itself. Education is not becoming more ineffective simply because of political wrangling about the role of religion in schools, but also because there is a lack of understanding about moral issues, such as plagiarism. Another important issue that must be addressed in order to help save the deteriorating state of the American educational system is that of the grading system. Educational researchers, students, and teachers at all levels have confronted the issue of possible imbalance in the system even though, according to one opinion, “No one has ever demonstrated that students today get A’s for the same work they used to receive B’s or C’s”. In other words, even though there is an ages-old debate about the grading system it is generally something that comes and goes yet is without a great deal of merit. In many ways, it seems as though there is a great deal of time being wasted within the educational system about this supposed problem.

Goodman, Ellen. “Religion in the Textbooks.” To the Point: Reading and Writing Short Arguments. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller, Harvey S. Wiener. New York. Pearson Education Inc, 2005.

Kohn, Alfie. “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation.” To the Point: Reading and Writing Short Arguments. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller, Harvey S. Wiener. New York. Pearson Education Inc, 2005.