You've heard the phrase too many times "Will we ever use this in real life?" Is the education system in America even teaching us the useful knowledge we need to get through the next 60 years? The answer is no, in recent decades our education system hasn't kept pace with the rest of the world. In the 1970s, the U.S. had a higher percentage of college graduates than any other nation. Now we're sixteenth and slipping (Kirp 7). .
During high school I remember students going to the teacher a week before the semester ended and asking how they can get their F to an A. All they would have to do is a simple PowerPoint on an easy topic the teacher chose for them. The standards of education have declined rapidly and since high standards are not enforced in K-12, many students enter college without basic skills, necessitating colleges to lower their own expectations of and demands on students (Rochester 54). Students learn to manipulate their teachers rather than just sitting down and getting their work done. We are taught to be lazy and find the easy way out of having to learn something we don't find interesting. .
We all know the "core" subjects, English, math, science, and history. While most of the time schools focus on other learning, such as art or song and dance. Rochester states that school is no longer about mastery. It is about dabbling (87). More students would rather have fun than to learn how to solve a quadratic equation. This will hurt students entering college, where you must take these core classes in order to graduate but were too busy learning how to make a ceramic pot. This is not the student's fault that we are not learning what we need. Teachers' and principals' must take full responsibility in our education, guaranteeing that they will teach us useful material that we will use for the rest of our lives. It's an article of faith that instilling fear among teachers and principals will prod them into doing better (Kirp 209).