The role that the educational system should play in the lives of individuals is to educate them to be conscious, critically thinking individuals who do not passively accept knowledge but question the knowledge that is being taught to them. Education should be taught to give students the skills and intelligence they need to understand the world and how it works in order to survive in it. However, the American educational system has been known to produce students who are woefully ignorant about the history of America and different cultures. One of the reasons for this dilemma is because the educational system in its current formation does not leave much room for critical thinking but trains individuals to be docile, worker bees in a decaying economy that keeps corporations wealthy and its workers barely making it. The problem becomes evident if one looks at the varied curriculum and subjects that are being taught in the public schools. There’s a lack of emphasis on critical thinking and the only thing that matters is high stakes testing. The schools in America have become swamped with fuzzy curriculum assuming that through constant testing, students will be prepared for life in a new global society . . . whatever that is.

In order for the educational system in this country to produce students who are not clueless about its history and the world surrounding them, it should be restructured in several ways. Parental involvement should be mandatory; just as school attendance for students is mandatory for graduation and lack of parental involvement is an enormous contributing factor to the current failing educational system. Parents need to instill in their children the belief that an education is necessary, just like food, water, and shelter. Teachers are wonderful people who can take students from the top of Mount Olympus to the cold and desolation of Antarctica but they’re there to teach, not parent. Many teachers spend a great deal of their class time disciplining children and playing babysitter, two things that are not a part of their job curriculum. Teachers need involvement from parents in order for the educational system to work and education begins at home.

Funding for the educational system should also be restructured. Public schools are traditionally funded by property taxes which is disastrous for poor neighborhoods. Communities that are wealthy have more funding for their local schools than those who do not. This situation directly affects the quality of education children in urban and poor rural areas receive. There should be a fair tax system for education that is not based on the property taxes of homeowners. Government funding, for the most part, is distributed to the various schools by state and local governments and there is huge disparities in this funding based on race. According to Spring (2001), “There is a gap of more than $1,000 per student nation wide based on race in large states such as New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, who lead the nation in their unwillingness to fairly fund education” (pg 77). Children should not suffer because of their economic background or ethnicity and public education should make no distinctions between rich and poor, black and white. Every child attending a public school should be granted an equal education regardless of their zip code. Equal funding would give teachers the proper resources to better educate students. School choice and the privatization of the public school system would not be a factor because under this plan, the educational system in America would be fully and equally funded by the federal government and closely monitored. With the influx of money pouring into the educational system from the government, schools would change dramatically for the better because that is the biggest issue in most public schools is lack of money.

The educational system’s curriculum should also be changed in order to fit in with the nation’s melting pot of different cultures and ethnicities. From elementary to high school, students are bombarded with facts and figures about wealthy, old white men as if women and other minorities do not exist or have contributed anything worthy to the history of America. No wonder so many students blank out historical facts: they do not care for these facts because they cannot relate to the actors in the story. Student should be required to take courses that will give them a more in depth understanding of the world surrounding them, courses that will discuss the history of marginalized and oppressed individuals in this country and around the world. They should be required to read books that make them think, not just process information for the next test. If more students understood the values and cultures of people unlike themselves, it would not be easy or maybe even impossible for the media to use propaganda and lies to sway public opinion.

Having competent teachers, board members, and administrators are also a vital part of restructuring the educational system. What are the exact qualifications for an administrator or a board member? What type of degrees must they have? These are the questions that need answers and not just rhetoric. Board members should not be chosen because their personal relationship with the local mayor; all board members would have a Master’s degree in Education or have an extensive background in social justice. As for the teachers, under this new educational system would make sure that the best teachers are chosen for the positions and evaluations should be given yearly. This would give parents and the educational system a chance to find out what is wrong and what is needed to correct the problems. Public education needs teachers and board members who actually care about the children and their education, not individuals who want the perks of working for the school system: summers and holidays off, steady raises and a fat compensation package. American children are suffering due to the inadequacies of the individuals involved with the educational system.

The “culture of poverty” theory that has been used by several politicians to explain differences in learning between different ethnicities would be exposed as a blatant attempt by the status quo to “blame” individuals for their poverty. Huge educational gaps between poor students and wealthy students do not occur because the poorer students have adapted to their poverty-stricken existence but because they do not have resources necessary to succeed in school. If students have to deal with textbooks that are outdated, lack of toiletries, and computers from the late 1980s, and teachers who do not care about them, their opportunities for academic achievement is dismal and their chances of dropping out of school more likely.

In a just and equal society, the educational system I discussed would have already been implemented decades ago, but it has not and more than likely will not be implemented. In a hierarchical society such as in America, there will always be someone on the low end of the totem pole and the best way to do that is through the miseducation of its most vulnerable citizens: the children. The neglect of the educational system in the US threatens the economic well being of the entire nation. Unless the inequalities in education are diminished and its system totally restructured, the wealth gap between the rich and the poor will continue to widen and the US will continue to be infamous for being the nation of the ignorant and undereducated.

Works Cited
Spring, Joel. American Education. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.