education reform Essay -- essays research papers fc

Education Reform  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Education reform means to make education better by removing faults and defects. True educators are always thinking of more effective ways to enhance and democratize the way children learn. With the continuous change of growing population, economics, culture, family, and global communication, there has to be continuous educational reforms to keep the society abreast with these changes. One of education’s early reformers is John Dewey. Dewey operated and experimental school where he wanted â€Å"to discover in administration, selection of subject matter, methods of learning teaching, and discipline, how a school could become a cooperative community while developing in individuals their own capacities and identifying their own needs.† (Dewey’s Laboratory School page XII) another education, Harold Howe II in his book â€Å"Thinking about Our Kids,† reiterates that families and communities are as important as schools in the education of our children. He also ta lks about the need for new approaches to financing schools, more attention to changing classroom routine in particular, and for better understanding of, and respect for the many races and cultures that make up our society. Regardless of the era in which education reform is thought of, the number one priority is the children. Although Dewey’s’ experiment was done over a century ago, the lessons learned then can apply in today’s world. Children are the same, they go through the same stages of development and must learn how to solve some kind of problems if they are to live in the world of today. The country is bursting at its seams with the population growth. With the growth comes a very diverse group of people. People migrate with their culture. Language has become one of the many barriers in the prevention of literacy. When our mentors wrote or planned school reform, the rate of population growth was not as rapid it is now. Migrants then tried to learn the languages spoken in their new land. Today we have programs to foster children who do not have English as their first language, but are these programs successful?  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Many of the students are taught in their first language (usually Spanish) but then have to sit the standardized state examination in the English langua ge. This situation could be termed as â€Å"unexpected difficulties an... ...pport Act of 1988† but this too is plague by limited finding. If education reform is to be successful, these programs must be viable. If is of paramount importance that education reform is need especially in this era. We are in a changing world and we must improve our educational standards to compete on the world market. The United States of America is a wealthy nation therefore it must spend more on educating its young. Politics and politician should be removed from planning and governing the education system. This should be in the hands of educators. It is unforgivable that our leaders has allowed United States of America to have one third of its population illiterate and spends less on education than other nations that are not as wealthy. Classroom teachers should be able to be more flexible in adjusting the standards to fulfill the needs of the students, instead of teaching (drilling) the children to past standardized examinations. Bibliography Howe Harold II 1993 Thinking About Ours Kids. An Agenda for American Education. Kozol Jonathan 1985 Illiterate America Tanner Laurel N. 1997 Dewey’s Laboratory School Lessons for Today