Top Ten Ways to Make the U.S. Have the Best Education System in the World

Let's face it. Not every kid is smart or special. There, I said it. Not all kids can be doctors or lawyers, and there's nothing wrong with that. Apparently, the makers of No Child Left Behind and Common Core didn't get that memo. They believe that all children have an equal amount of potential, so they should all have an equal amount of attention. By believing this, you are condemning the gifted and intelligent to mediocrity. We should teach to each students potential, and realize that every student has different needs.

WHAT? Why on earth should it be harder to go to college? Shouldn't we be making it easier? Yes and no. We should be making college more affordable for those in society who are gifted, intelligent, and work high-skilled jobs. We should, however, discourage low-skilled and unintelligent workers from attending college. Why? Because too many people are getting degrees. A couple of decades ago, if you didn't go to college, you still had a good chance of getting a job. Now, college is basically necessary if you don't want to work minimum wage. Why is that? It's because average people decided to go to college and pursue worthless degrees that will never benefit them, forking thousands of dollars in the process. Now, because everyone and their mother has a Bachelor's degree, the degree is basically worthless. Lots of employers don't even care about BA's anymore. So now everyone is pursuing a Master's degree, whether they need it or not, because from pre-k to high school they have the thought drilled into their head that they're worthless without a degree. Once everyone gets a Master's degree, that degree will become worthless. Then everyone will pursue a Doctorate. Soon, you'll have to take 20 years of college to work minimum wage. What we should do is get rid of worthless degrees, such as Liberal Arts, Philosophy, Fashion Design, Family Studies, Music, etc. By doing that, college would become unnecessary for around half the population. Then, we can make college more affordable, or maybe even free for those pursuing jobs in industries such as healthcare, engineering, STEM, teaching, etc, which all have major positive effects on society. By doing this, the cost of college would go down dramatically, you would no longer have to fork over tens of thousands of dollars to get a job that pays 40k a year, and degrees would become more relevant in our society again.

Now, in most public schools, it's not uncommon to have 30, or maybe even 40 kids in a class with just one teacher. Because of this, students can constantly heckle and disrupt the class, because the teacher is vastly outnumbered. If we drastically shrink classroom sizes, or decrease student-teacher ratios, teachers will have a better ability to keep peace in the classroom, while, at the same time, having more time to spend with each student.

I don't know how lower level teachers can teach a class of 40 and how each student can keep up.

Remember I told you that a good portion of the population cannot name how many stars that are on the flag? Yeah, that's not okay. Not remotely. Standards should be raised in every level of education, from kindergarten to high school. I'm currently in high school, and I still have lots of classmates who struggle to read a sentence out loud. Some still have to sound out the syllables. Others don't know basic arithmetic. This is unacceptable. We need to drastically increase standards for all students.

Studies have shown that students and teachers who receive more breaks are both more productive and less stressed. Finland is constantly ranked as having the best education system in the world, yet school days, on average, last only about four hours, compared to seven or eight in the U.S. This gives students more time to study and think about the lessons that they learned, and teachers more time to plan for the next day's lesson.

Standardized testing has done little to help schools' outcomes. They don't help students learn material, they just help students take tests. I was in class one day when we were preparing for the state test. I didn't understand how the teacher got the answer to one question, so I asked her about it. She said that it didn't matter, because we still had a lot more of the test to go over. There have even been reports of teachers helping students cheat on these tests, because their jobs can depend on their success. In Finland, students have to take only one standardized test their entire academic career, compared to an average of around ten for American schools.

I'm not one of those people who simply claim that by throwing money at our problems, they will automatically be fixed. However, it is common knowledge that lots of public schools are drastically underfunded. Where I go to, bathroom stalls are around one foot wide, our textbooks are five or six years old and have ten or so pages missing, there's trash and graffiti everywhere, etc. Schools need to be completely revamped in order to compete with the rest of the world.

We should make it easier for parents to send their kids to whatever they want, be it public or private. Right now, public schools basically have a monopoly over the education system, because they are free, and private school can be costly. Because of this, they don't have the inclination to Improve their facilities or school performance. If we increase the amount of vouchers given to parents, public schools will have to become more competitive, which will increase their performance.

I was bullied and ostracized for being atheist. The only other school district in my bible belt town was a private religious school.

No, seriously. If like to see you alert in class when you ate a slice of grease-dripping pizza and a burger which was cooked two weeks ago. You then try to eat a salad, but it's 50% water. You try the vegetables, but they're frozen and taste like bleach. Your stomach will not forgive you, trust me. Then, all you have to drink is a tiny carton of orange juice, which lasts two sips. Our cafeterias are a joke, and need to be improved. We need to offer more fruits and vegetables which are actually edible, cut back on the grease, and encourage students to drink more water.

All homework does is stress students out. Perhaps like 10 minutes a night would be good practice, but an hour or more is just over doing it.

Lockers are such a hassle, 25 bucks for a replacement and they crowd hallways. We should just let kids keep their binders at school so kids don't need to buy a backpack.