Our public education system is broken. . .
September 17, 2009
If you don’t agree how do you explain the fact that 75% of Oklahoma high school students can’t name the first president of the United States. The study was conducted by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. The group gave more than a thousand students ten questions from the U.S. Citizenship test. 92% of immigrants from Africa, India and China are able pass the test. Only 3% (yes t-h-r-e-e percent) of Oklahoma students would have passed the citizenship test. Before you say that this is just a problem with Oklahoma you should realize that the results were the same in Arizona and other states.
Not only are our schools failing to teach our children basic facts, they are failing to teach our children civility. Watch this video of students on a bus cheering as one student attacks another student. What is the answer? For our family the answer was simple – we send our children to private schools. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be – Jefferson.
The United States spends more money on education than all other industrialized nations according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In fact we spend more than double the average on a per-student basis. Interestingly, the US has the biggest gap between high and low performing students in an industrialized nation – this gap is a result of private and public schools. The public schools fail, the private schools succeed.
What is answer? More money? In the public school system more money doesn’t make a bit of difference. It is a travesty that we live in a country where only the rich can get an education. I don’t have the answer, just the question…
