Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

The importance of having an education is relevant in the United States. In order to get a well-paying job, most employers require you to have a college degree, which pushes students to continue education.  But are United States teachers and government really pushing towards continued education, or do they just want students to pass from grade to grade, because it is the student’s duty to do so? Elementary and secondary education is the foundation to a child’s academic standing for the future. What they learn in this period of their life determines how well they can focus on education in the future. Chapter 12 discusses the many different contexts of learning and the schooling systems around the world in comparison to the United States.  In comparison to different countries, you can view the United States as a greatly run education system or a poor education system. I feel that the United States has a long way to go to get their education system up to par. This you tube video shows a great perception of how the United States has been running their education system.

I think that the importance of education should be implemented more in the United States. The fact that statistics show that passing to the next grade for students that live in a low class environment is relatively in a low percentile. These factors among others should make the government aware that a better system should be created in order to provide the same type of education for children all across the United States, in which all the children have that “readiness” to pass to the next grade.  Teachers in the United States get paid relatively low to teach and this should change as well.  According to payscale.com, teachers receive a salary of $41,070, while the salary of a baseball player is well over a million dollars. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? Good teachers should get rewarded for their good teaching. However, we find ourselves laying off teachers in the United States, which means that classrooms will be overcrowded and that one-on-one student-teacher relationship will be fading.

Another reason in which the United States education system is failing is budget cuts and not enough funding. More hands on activities, such as trips to educational places should be implemented and taken into consideration, with a budget that should be provided by the government. Instead, money fundings are typically implemented on being spent on new baseball fields or on other unnecessary structures.

The way a child learns in a school environment should be one of the most important topics in governmental meetings that take place in the United States. Children are the future professionals, and they deserve the best education to in order to help them succeed.