A lot has been said recently about the failure of American education.
As an educator actively involved in attempting to educate youth, this was of some concern to me. I wondered if perhaps I could, or should, do more than my daily 10 hours, for eight of which I am paid. I wondered if I was, in some way, responsible for students not completing assignments or retaking exams. I wondered if perhaps I should lower my expectations to what the students feel they can handle, rather than expecting them to rise to my expectations.I finally decided that if American education has failed, then I must be failing my students. I shouldn't let them watch an average of 4 1/2 hours of TV every school day. I shouldn't encourage them to take responsibility for their own actions, but I should excuse them by blaming the school, the administration and the teachers.
I certainly shouldn't encourage legislators to spend any more money on this overcrowded, underfunded, understaffed failure of a system. I should encourage them to allow all parents to educate their students at home, where they will be exposed to a wide variety of subjects and people and their people skills will greatly improve as they interact with their families, Internet friends and the TV.
This failure of a system, which has completely failed to educate almost everyone, should be scrapped and replaced by a better system, one that does the job effectively.
Leslie Carvel Wilson
Syracuse Junior High School
Syracuse