Why is America schooling so bad?

Question

What's different about the American's way of teaching from japan and england and new zealand, china etc and besides the languages.

Answer 1

I think it is a fantasy that American schooling is bad. American schools are not set up the same way as schools in other countries, and do not get either the same financial support, or respect from the community that schools in other countries get. Also, they have to deal with a lot of problems that other countries schools dont have to deal with.

You could compare the scores of Japanese students with American students. The Japanese score higher. But they also go to school more hours, spend a LOT of time in after school tutoring sessions, their schools get more financial support from the government, the students are MUCH more uniform in language and culture (our local city schools have kids that speak more than 50 different langugages at home), etc.

If American schools were so terrible, then people from all over the world wouldnt be trying to get into them so hard. Check the notices on Yahoo and you will see a LOT of notices from foreign kids trying to get into American schools.

Answer 2

1. Major universities can be top notch, if you can afford them. I have been very disappointed with lower-level (pre-University) education.

2. Americans generally have an anti-intellectual bent. Kids who study and do well are characterized as "nerds" and looked down on. Even as adults, intellectualism has never been very popular in America. We worship sports stars and celebrities and people who just make a lot of money more than people who contribute to intellectual thought. Nothing wrong with that, but those values do shape how education goes.

3. Instead of recognizing that the entire state or nation benefits when everyone has a good education, the funding for schools are done at a very local level, meaning that poor areas get poor schools

4. Parents aren't willing to give teachers the power to enforce discipline. We are a very individualistic society, which means that the needs of the group are held hostage to the desires of the individual.

5. People who are saying that elementary and high schools in America are great---their assertions just don't stand up to the facts. Americans lose on multiple fronts in measures of their education levels.

6. Not enough competition. Parents don't have enough choices among schools and teachers/administrators are difficult to fire.

Answer 3

You mean... American schooling? Wow, what a hypocritical critic. America and Japan have the best school systems in the world. Japan has a stricter, more difficult school program. Everyone is required to take the difficult classes such as physics and calculus. They go to school 6 days a week for 8 hrs. a day all yr. long. America also does very well. The only reason the American school system doesn't work for some people is because they don't apply themselves.

Answer 4

Community funding.

It isn't all bad. The problem is that the bad school districts are
generally both drawing their kids from situations where the kids aren't getting much help at home, and they have less money to work with because in many states school funding is done at the local level.

There is less of an emphasis placed on schooling nationwide in the US. This varies greatly though depending on the community. It would be better to say that our pre-University education is mediocre. We still have the best Universities in the world.

Answer 5

I don't think American schooling is bad, it depends on where you live. Also private and public schools are different. For the most part, there's inadequate funding for schools and shortage of teachers especially in inner city schools like in Baltimore, etc. Another reason could be kids these days are distracted by so many other things, like cellphones, videogames, etc...there's a lack of motivation to study hard. Especially in the US, a lot of the things we have we take for granted for, so sometimes we don't have that drive to study hard. I know for myself, my parents had a huge influence on me to do well in school, so family plays a big role too. Another factor could be the environment the kids grow up in. If they live in a crime or drug-ridden neighborhood, chances are they'll drop out of school.

Answer 6

we live in a free country and a lot of people in america are lazy. they don't live in a disciplined environment and on top of that are getting very lousy pay for the amount of work and stress that they go through. i really think that they're underpaid for teaching the leader's of our future. other countries are the same, but they don't have so much influence like america and the children here just choose not to learn better. it's not the teacher's at fault, but the students who think it's cool to be "bad".

Answer 7

Not as great structure and discipline. In terms, some places here in America are GHETTO, so it makes it harder to educate students. It also has to do w/ the media and how they always portray negativity, i.e. war, murders, kidnappings, drug-use. So the media portrays a lot of bad things to society and ultimately, kids see this and it carries over to school w/ them emulating the actions they see from that.

Answer 8

there are a few reasons that the level of education in the US may be inferior to the educational systems offered in the aforementioned countries:

1. distribution of wealth
the lower 50% of the US shares 2% of total US wealth (according to 2000 census) - this entails a similar effect in the allocation of educational resources, meaning poor neighborhoods will generally offer a lower quality of education than that of its wealthier counterpart)

2. incomes of teachers - many argure these salaries are generally poor, proportionate to the significance of their occupational roles/demands. This in turn, becomes cyclical, lowering the motivation to purse teaching as a career interest, thus lowering the supply of teachers, which elicits school districts to lower the requisites of the relevent positions, and so forth

3. money (or lack thereof) allocated for educational resources (at the local, state, and government levels)

4. values - ie. the desire to answer questions on yahoo, rather than play a productive role in the economy (j/k)

5. substitution effect - in poverish communities, education may be substituted (by necessity) for full-time work

6. anomie - a theory that inequality (experienced in poverty) results in a general state of malaise (laziness), which serves as a damper on one's motivation to attain higher education, or take the means necessary to improve their quality of life

Answer 9

It's not that bad...it's who chooses to learn. some teachers just want to get it over with so thier classes are easy but it's not always that bad. a lot of kids do want to learn.

but if your asking for a judgement...american schools (public) are that way because they believe we americans are ignorant. but thats that..

Answer 10

yet, we nonetheless call for our babies do fireplace drills. even as develop into the ultimate time we had a fireplace in a school? hint: that's been over a one hundred years. possibly that's time we practice our babies for college capturing drills.