Democratizing American Education Essay

For a long time, the American education system has been plagued with criticism. In 1983, for instance, a report entitled “A Nation In Risk” in the National Commission on Quality in Education warned that “the educational foundations of our society happen to be presently becoming eroded with a rising wave of mediocrity that poises our incredibly future like a Nation and a people. ” (p. 4) Two decades after, America’s community schools possess barely made progress in addressing the difficulties posed by the NCEP survey.

This is confirmed by the continuing inability on most schools to create students who also are mathematically and linguistically competitive enough for the demands of the American labor marketplace. (Du Pont, 2003) Likewise, the quick increase in migrant population has had the problems from the American educational system towards the fore by simply heightening the impact of the socio-economic divide in individuals’ entry to quality education. In “Lives on the Boundary, ” writer and educator Mike Went up (2008) explains how the changing landscape of America is usually pushing the advantages of reforms in the educational system in order to adjust to the varied realities of the multi-cultural American background.

Yet , Rose also contends that some plans being advanced supposedly to democratize education, may actually enhance rather than narrow down the gap between the abundant and the poor, and further exclude the people who’ve been historically marginalized both practically and figuratively from the sphere of learning and education. (as mentioned in Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz, 2008, p. 99) 1 finds it hard to disagree with Rose’ uncertainties about the ability of the proposal to return to what he phone calls the canonical tradition in the university in addition to American education in general, to show the quality of American education around. Rose reveals the problems of the proposal to return to what this individual calls the canonical traditions of teaching simply by presenting the realities of three zuzugler students and an African-American student, people with vastly different cultural experience from the mostly white, middle-class America.

With this situation, it is doubtful that canonical teaching would be able to address the increasing need for student learning that is certainly based not simply on literacy but likewise the unique requires of the pupils for interpersonal inclusion and empowerment. Increased argues, for example, that the infatuation among influential educators and policymakers to “define achievements and brilliance in terms of the acquisition of a historically authenticated body of knowledge” (as cited in Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz, 08, p. 98) tend to push the marginalized more deeply in to the margins instead of brings these people into the interpersonal fabrics of American society.

Without a doubt, despite the democratic trapping that is thrown above efforts to determine uniform standards and benchmarks of learning, at the heart with the canonical custom is the trend to homogenize student thinking and learning. The superficial commitment to democratizing education is illustrated in the way that America’s education leaders pay lip service to democratic ideals while carrying on to reject the rich cultural selection and the personality of each student in terms of his or her learning needs. One of the educators that Flower mentions is usually Paulo Freire, who recognized that true education should be relevant to the lives in the masses in the event that is to include any that means at all.

From this sense, an excellent return to an education that is based on the “Great Books” or perhaps “the canons” would be tantamount to regression. Such proposals also undoubtedly dilute community debate and understanding of the structural imperfections of the American education system through the naive and myopic assumption that the failures of American education are caused by a failure in educational methods alone. However , students have pointed out that the degeneration of the American educational method is pedagogical in nature.

Cruz, et. al. (2004) say, for instance, which the decay in American education arises from the “increased effect of corporations” (p. 193) on educational policy. As a result, the frontrunners of the American educational program suffer from a simplistic view of education in which it can be seen as a simply a means to train the next generation of workers, cogs in the superb American professional empire, in order to sustain America’s supremacy around the world.

The Usa States’ burglar alarm at the increasing “mediocrity” of yankee schools was rooted more in its economical concerns while the world’s economic large rather than issues for cultivating a better American society based on American principles and ideals. Clearly, the continuing inability of the current system of education points just to its inability to provide college students with the ideal learning chances; and the ideal learning opportunities are necessarily the ones through which they truly feel have link with their facts, which have relevance in their lives and in their particular struggles for the sense of identity and belonging.

With this aspect, the benchmark used to measure scholar learning in American colleges must be asked and analyzed based on how these are generally used to custom students based upon the mould of the ideal worker and punish learners who are not able to cope with this kind of corporatist educational standards mainly because they master differently or perhaps they have difficulty understanding the new culture they may be in. However, word “mediocrity” or the packaging “inferior” carries with it the opinion of class, competition, and sexuality. Clearly, these labels are generally attached to individuals or groupings who happen to be impoverished and who are unable to conform to the best of white supremacy and strength.

Hence, meaningful education must “consider the circumstance in which this occurs, ” (Rose, because cited in Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz, 2008, p. 101) More importantly, rising the nature of literacy necessitates a comprehension of how you can use it as a application for leaving you the marginalized, the uprooted, and the disenfranchised on the basis of social inclusion and identity creation. In this impression, standardized tests and benchmarks can never really measure what students master. Instead, educators should produce and make use of learning benchmarks that are based on the cement learning needs and hobbies of learners.

Thus, Rose’ discussion of the continuing marginalization of the migrant and “cultural minorities” in the field of education reflects the cultural inequities which will underlie the challenge of American education. Further, the author’s critique of the further threats carried by moves pertaining to canonical-oriented reforms shows how the educational issue lies in the typical philosophical trouble of the which means and relevance of education for every citizen. In the attempts to institute reforms that could democratize and enhance usage of American education, there is absolutely nothing more busting than the assumption that a single American experience exists where the entire American society may relate to.

One other faulty presumption is that every single American pupil can be educated to respond and to believe based on the best male, white colored, and middle-class American. It is this multi-dimensional nature of America that the leaders of the American educational system have got time and again failed to acknowledge. It really is this failing by American leaders to come to grips together with the diverse nature of American truth that is the real cause of the growing mediocrity in American schools. Works Reported: Du Pont, P. (2003).

Two decades of mediocrity. The Wall Street Journal. Recovered July 35, 2008 by http://www. opinionjournal. com/columnists/pdupont/? id=110003445 National Percentage on Brilliance in Education (1983).

A nation in danger: imperatives intended for educational reform. Retrieved September 30, 08 from http://www. ed. gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk. html Rose, M. (2008). Lives on the Boundary. In Lunsford, A. and Ruszkiewicz, J. (Eds. ) The presence of others: Voices that require response, (p.

90-103). New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Smith, M. L., Fey, P., Miller-Kahn, L., Heinecke, W., & P. N. Jarvis (2004). Political Spectacle and the Fate of American Schools. United States: Routledge.