American Education

Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, the American educational system has undergone much transition in response to our changing society. Though there have been many problems raised throughout the years in regard to what our school systems should be teaching our children, there have also been many developments.

In the final decades of the 20th century, education has continued to evolve in order to meet society's demands. The transformation of society has created numerous problems in the educational system. These problems consist of the segregation of races, religions, social classes, and politics. In the earlier part of the 20th century, African-Americans were segregated within schools. They were placed into lower-class school systems with little extra-curricular activities, limited resources, and lower quality teachers.

At this time, religion played a major role on the educational system in the sense that all types of religious groups were represented in the American school system, but they were challenged with how they could be loyal to their religions beliefs. With the "Pledge of Allegiance" present, some people felt as though the values of Americans and the "Creators'" beliefs should be taught in the classrooms. Of course, others felt that religion and school should be separate. As a result of disagreements such as these, many problems arose.

Politics and business influence have been a long term problem for the establishment of a free and fair education opportunity. America has been called "the melting pot" of the world, meaning that within the nation live such an abundance of individuals from different aspects of life. Within the world, we find some societies less fortunate than other societies. Economic diversity is present within the United States as well. It is commonly understood that the wealthy are becoming better educated than the poor, and similarly that the wealthy have a better chance to survive in the economic growth of today's society.

In Joel Spring's book American Education, he uses several examples of the politics and economics surrounding education. Spring discusses the decade of the 1970s, in which businesses put such a demand on the educational system to create educational opportunities in the fields of science and engineering. During this decade, the nation was in an "educational inflation period". College graduates with doctorate degrees were working in jobs with typically require much less educational background. (Examples: Driving taxicabs and cooking in restaurants ). This inflation occurred because the labor force put such a high demand on education, but did not expand to accompany this high demand. The inflation became problematic due to the fact that businesses were donating privately funded money to the educational institutions rather than the citizens in the communities with higher taxes.

Toward the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century, the American education system has continued to evolve with some new curricular modifications. In 1992, the "Children of the Rainbow" curriculum was introduced in New York. This revolutionary curriculum required elementary schools to teach tolerance towards gays and lesbians. Other new curricula proposals centered around sexual education, which intended for schools to teach about family values, abstinence, and sexually transmitted diseases, and methods of family planning. Another major issue that the American school system was dealing with was nutrition and eating habits of youth. In 2002 the U.S congress passed the "Obesity and Prevention Treatment Act", to improve the eating habits in the nation , where more than 60 percent of Americans are overweight.

Economic concerns and issues continue to plague the education system throughout the United States. The "Head Start" program has been established to provide early childhood education to give economically disadvantaged children early schooling, which seeks to allow them to compete on equal terms with other children. Similar to placing children on an equal plane economically, equality of opportunity is also a goal which continues to be addressed. The goal is whether a person is rich or poor, black or white, Catholic or Jewish, man or woman, everyone should be given equal opportunity to achieve the desired result of learning.

Perhaps the most significant development in the American educational system is the "No Child Left Behind Act" which refers to "integrating secular character education into curricula and teaching methods of schools." President Bush believes that education should prepare children for jobs and provide children with necessary life skills. This act was enacted in 2001, and it is still very much a work in progress.

At the start of the 21st century, educators are faced with a number of problems brought on by the social, political, and the economic challenges of society. Social problems are arising as a result of class segregation. The wealthier cities have higher- class public schools and private schools. In the poor cities there is lower structured schooling. In these areas, the teacher to student ratios is lower, there are more cut backs of extra curricular activities, and a lower number of resources available. This is still a major problem in 2005. The economic problems which we are facing at the beginning period of this century concern the population and the labor force. Schools are becoming over populated because of the need for money for expansion which is not readily available for all schools. Businesses and large corporations can provide large sums of money to support studies, research, and organizations. The power of the institutions lies in their ability to influence or control areas in which the schools spend money. This leads to the intellectuals who work for them, including college professors to be viewed as "servant-like."

Major goals and tasks in which educators are trying to establish evolve around equal opportunity which includes language barriers, children with disabilities, and multicultural education. Our society is growing at a dramatically high rate, and therefore, teachers have to be educated in many languages. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the English Language Acquisition Act of 2001 both propose the right of bilingual education. These acts give the right for immigrants to be proficient in the use of two languages. For instance: a Mexican or Puerto Rican child can be taught to be proficient in Spanish and English.

Although there have been laws and bills passed in the past dealing with children with disabilities, we are now seeing more examples of plans designed for each student with disabilities. These are known as IEPs, which stands for Individual Education