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Josh Thompson

Sarah Kiewitx

ENG 1201

Mar 25, 2022

Education in America How and Why it Can be Improved

How many times have you heard someone ask in class “when are we going to use this” or

an adult talking about how they remember nothing from school yet they are still perfectly fine.

Perhaps this is because our education system isn’t able to keep up with a modern, constantly

changing world. Countries around the world have made drastic changes to their education

systems, and yet American education is starting to become outdated. This leaves many

Americans and American students feeling like their time in school is not well spent and is a

waste of time. The American education system can be improved upon with the time management

of the school day, the content that is provided and how it is provided, and class structure. This

would bring American education not only on par but even better than competing countries own

education systems

The type of education that we use now in America is very similar to what our parents and

even our grandparents experienced. Conderiding how much the world has changed since our

grandparents and even our grandparents have been in school changes everything. Globalization

has occurred, and the world is so much more interconnected than it ever has been in history,

making the global climate more and more complex and harder to navigate as more and more
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cultures clash and assimilate. This creates problems that have never been seen before, yet we are

still trying to solve these problems by using what we have learned from school, the same things

that have been learned for decades before us. Saying that technology has increased dramatically

would be an understatement. Since the time our grandparents and maybe even some of our

parents have been in school, we have put men on the moon, made flying accessible for most

people, everyone has a car, and not to mention arguably the biggest change in our society: cell

phones. We have access to almost limitless information at all times in our pockets. Yet, in

schools, we are told to put these tools away instead of being taught how to use them to our

benefit.

Standardized testing is a staple of American education. Students grow to hate test days,

where they are forced to sit and take a test to show what they know over the course of many

hours. These tests often determine school funding making it harder for lower-performing schools

to gain more funding to raise test scores. Not to mention the copious amounts of stress that it can

put students under. Many students including people you may know, or even yourself stay up late

night after night, not getting enough sleep which not only can have negative effects on their

academics but also can hurt their development. These standardized tests came about during the

cold war. The US government wanted to be able to pinpoint the smartest individuals to hire them

for research and weapons development against the Soviet Union. The cold war has ended and has

been over 30 years and yet we are still using education models put in place during this time.

Something needs to change to put the American education system back in place in modern times.

How many times have you heard about a student complaining about being tired? Walk

into any American high school and ask a student if they are tired, chances are they will say yes

according to new survey findings from the Inside Higher Ed who found students report “three
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key feelings, ‘tired,’ ‘stressed,’ and ‘bored’” (Carrasco). Why is this? When taking a look at

what a typical day may look like for a student it becomes obvious. Many high school-aged

students find themselves waking up at 6 in the morning or even earlier to get ready for school.

Once arriving at school, they are there until 3 in the afternoon. After that, many students have

extracurricular activities, which they are encouraged to do such as sports, band, or some may

work jobs. Some students may not get home until 7 or 8 in the evening and it is not uncommon

for many students to get home even later than that. Once arriving at home students will need to

eat, and shower before starting their homework for the night. They might not be able to start this

homework until 9 or 10 at night. This is the time they need to be going to bed to get the

recommended sleep of “8-10 hours per 24 hours” to get enough sleep to wake up at the time they

do (Sleep in Middle School and High School Students). An almost impossible task for many

students on a typical night. This causes them to not get enough sleep when having to wake up so

early, causing fatigue and lowering performance, as well as potentially causing poor

development.

Many people would argue this is just how school is. Everyone goes through this period of

life and students should have to endure it. However, what do they lack of sleep and free time do

to a student over time? Compared to other countries from the Balance “US test scores have now

fallen below the global average”

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(Kimberly Ambdeo). Fifty years ago, the U.S was at the top of the charts, however, has done

very little to maintain a position at the top. Many of the countries that have surpassed the United

States are countries located in Europe and Asia, where school days are shorter, students are

getting more sleep on average, and in some of these countries, school weeks are only 4 days

instead of the typical 5 days a week. This gives students more time to do things that they want

and needs to do, allowing them to come to school and focus on school, instead of having all of

the other tasks of the day stressing them out, lowering their overall academic performance.

Finally, this new schedule helps students avoid burnout. Less time and emphasis

put on performing well on exams while in school help students feel more compelled to learn,

which is the entire point of school. Prestigious institutions, such as Standford, are finding this to
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be more and more true, saying “case studies show that learning environments emphazing

supportive relationships between students and teachers can boost achievement” (McKenna). This

means that the individual needs of the child are met rather than forcing the child to bend to the

standards that are set in place by the state, which in turn seems to increase performance, as

Sweden is in the top 10 countries in the world in terms of education.

The content which we teach in schools is not up to par with the modern challenges we

face. Upon graduating students face a plethora of challenges, such as finding a job, paying taxes,

communicating with a variety of people, and the social challenges that we face as a country.

Right now we do not do a very good job of preparing students for these challenges. Monetary

challenges and knowing how to manage money is something that is going to be a part of

anyone’s life forever and can often make life stressful or enjoyable and yet over a quarter of

American high school students do not feel like they have adequate skills to manage their

finances. This is compared to many countries in Europe where money management is taught, and

students are graduating with a working knowledge of how money works, because like almost

everything else. Money has gotten more and more complex over the years.

Another problem that seems to become more and more apparent in our society is mental

health issues. These problems are not limtied to students either with “nearly one in five U.S.

adults live with a mental illness (52.9 million in 2020)” according to the National Institute of

Mental Health (Mental Illness). Chances are that you know someone or you have dealt with

mental health issues. For such a prominent issue that we face it seems like more can be done to

help with this. We should be teaching students while they are in school strategies and techniques

on how to deal with these problems in a healthy way. This is proven to work as well, schools in

Finland incorporate mental health education into their curriculum, making students more aware
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of themselves. This, in turn, helps students address problems that they are facing but also find

techniques on how to deal with these issues as they surface for the rest of their life. This

promotes a population that, upon graduating and going out into the workforce, are happier than

those that aren’t. This is seen, once again in Finland’s citizens, as they are ranked the highest in

the world when it comes to the happiness of their citizens. The benefits of this don’t stop there.

Happy citizens are less likely to commit crimes, do drugs, and are more likely to be employed in

the workforce. These are problems that America faces today. Looking over to Finland it seems

there are some answers, and it comes from changing our curriculum to incorporate more mental

health teachings and how to deal with it.

In addition to the content that we provide, we could also improve upon how we present

the material to the students. When people, more specifically, Americans think of a typical

classroom, we tend to think of desks that are organized into rows and columns or maybe clusters,

all pointing towards the front of the classroom where the teacher stands at the front on the board

and teaches the lesson. Occasionally, students may get out of their seats and move about the

classroom, but typically, students stay in their seats until the class is over and move to the next

class where the same format is repeated. This system works the same for everyone, which for

some students is great and that is a good way for them to learn. For others, it is not at all the most

effective way to learn. The problem comes from students being forced to conform to this

standard that we’ve created, whether it's the best way for them to learn or not. Many schools

across the world, specifically in Europe, such as schools in Scandinavia and western Europe, and

some colleges and other higher-level education institutions are beginning to move away from this

model as there is surmounting evidence that this is not the most effective method of instruction.

Sometimes, this may be but instruction needs to be supplemented in different ways.

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One of the ways that this can be changed is by collaborative work with peers. Learning

how to work with other people in groups is a fantastic way for students to learn and grow

together. As mentioned before, recognizing that all students learn a little differently and that

some students may be slower or faster than others to grasp concepts is a good thing. Through

collaborative work, which should largely be led by the students, students that have a better

understanding of the material get a chance to grow in their leadership, mentoring, and

communication skills. Understanding an idea is one thing, but being able to teach others and get

them to the point of not only comprehension but also being able to teach others themselves

shows extremely high levels of understanding and helps an individual understand the material

that much more. Not only that but another obvious thing that goes along with this method of

instruction is that the students that don’t have as good of an understanding of the material get a

chance to learn it from another source, one that may work for them better than just sitting for

forty-five minutes while a teacher lectures at the front of the classroom.

Another good option for instruction on the material in addition to lecture and peer

collaboration is hand-on-learning. This is a term that is tossed around quite frequently but what

does it mean? All hands-on learning is students doing something rather than reading or watching

it in a textbook or film. This could take the form of many different things, such as actually

performing a science experiment rather than simply watching or reading one. Re-enacting

historical events rather than reading about them, opening a class market to learn about business

and practice math skills, real dissections. There are almost limitless opportunities for hands-on

learning. What all of these things provide, that neither lecture nor collaboration offers, at least

most of the time, is experience. This is invaluable to students and provides several benefits. One

positive thing that comes from it, is students gain real working knowledge and experience that
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helps them throughout their entire lives and when encountered with a problem. Hands on

learning works on multiple different levels such and is “so effective at information retention

involves both pyhsiological and psychological impacts…” while traditional learning only has

and impact on psychological levels of understanding (Arnholz).

Some people are of the opinion the American education system is fine as it is and does

not need to undergo change. Their biggest argument for this is that education tends to be a

subjective thing for an individual. There are no statistics to look at that can effectively compare

the validity and effectiveness of two different education systems. While measuring something as

large and complex as a country’s education system. However, there are multiple stats and figures

that can be looked at in order to determine the effectiveness of a particular education system and

compare it to another to determine effectiveness. There must be a way to do it, as the United

Nations is able to rank countries on their respective education systems.

The first, and probably most obvious one is comparing test scores. Giving students

standardized tests and comparing their scores is an effective way of measuring student

knowledge of what they have learned and it can be standardized. There is no error or bias either

with this method that may lead to the potential skew of the results if all students are given the

same test. And slowly over the last decade, American students have started showing lower and

lower test scores when compared to other European and Asian countries, specifically in areas

such as math and science as shown hear in a graph from the Pew Research Center.
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Language is a harder thing to compare as, different countries have different languages, so we will

not discuss these results. But students from other countries such as Singapore, Japan, and Finland

are constantly scoring higher than American students. With these countries having different

education systems one can only assume that their higher test scores are because of these

differences in education systems.

A second method that can be used to compare the effectiveness of education systems

throughout the world are surveys. While this method is harder to construct and requires a large

sample size which can be costly and not time effective, it is another way to measure how well

schools across the world are doing at teaching students. By constructing questions that evaluate

how well the students are being taught, answered by both teachers and students, and how

effective the curriculum is we are able to gauge the effectiveness of an education system in a

comparative manner. This means that is hard to associate numerical values with the results,

however, it can be used to compare. A country or education system that answers more positively

than another has a better education system than a country that answers more negatively.
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Despite all of the things that the American education system does well, it has its

shortcomings. Its history is rooted in an old-fashioned model of learning that has become

outdated and is getting surpassed by other countries. Other countries have better start and stop

times as well as time management throughout the school day and the school week. In addition,

these same countries are doing a better job of preparing students for a wider range of challenges

and situations in the future, such as mental health problems, and in doing so promote benefits

across society for all of their citizens. Lastly, these countries are doing a better job at presenting

this content in more effective ways, making it easier for students to learn more and as a result, be

more successful. These things on the surface may seem like subjective things, however by

looking at test scores and surveys, we are able to evaluate the effectiveness and compare the

efficiency of specific countries' education systems. Upon looking at this we see that America is

falling behind the rest of the world, and in order to give American students the same

opportunities as the rest of the world, something needs to change within our own education

system.
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Works Cited

Amadeo, Kimberly. “U.S. Education Rankings Are Falling behind the Rest of the World.”

The Balance, The Balance, 20 Jan. 2022,

Arnholz, Johnathon. “Is Hands-on Learning Better?” Build Your Future, 14 May 2021,

[Link]

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ce%2C%20the%20United%20States,529%2C%20and%20Finland%20at%20522.

Carrasco, Maria. Students Are More Stressed Now than Last January, 13 Jan. 2022,

[Link]

last-january.

DeSilver, Drew. “U.S. Students' Academic Achievement Still Lags That of Their Peers in

Many Other Countries.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 21 Aug.

2020,

[Link]

h-science/.
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“Education Rankings By Country 2022.” Education Rankings by Country 2022, 2022,

[Link]

y.

McKenna, Barbara. “Researchers Find Student-Centered Learning Approaches Help

Underserved Kids Achieve.” Stanford Graduate School of Education, 20 Mar.

2014,

[Link]

-help-underserved-kids-achieve.

“Mental Illness.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and

Human Services, 2022,

[Link]

es%20are%20common%20in,(52.9%20million%20in%202020).

“Sweden – the World's Best Education System?” Simply Learning Tuition, 21 Apr. 2021,

[Link]

-know-about-the-swedish-education-system/.

Tommaso, Agasisti, et al. “Measuring the Efficiency of European Education Systems by

Combining Data Envelopment Analysis and Multiple-Criteria Evaluation.” Journal

of Productivity Analysis , 2019.

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