Value of Education in 21st Century free essay sample

There is some bias and exaggerations to these statements, but overall Americans do work more than other Europeans, the same can’t be said however, for the nation’s youth. Unfortunately, the vigorous work ethic and strive to learn has not rubbed of on the nation’s children. American children have school for only 180 days year, compared to the 195 days in Germany and 200 in East Asia.Furthermore, they only have about 2-3 hours of homework per night and are not pressured by society to take extra classes after school; a fact that appalls nations such as Japan and India, whose children take after school classes regularly to help them with their studies. Americans also have the shortest school day, a mere six and half hours, all packed into the morning and early afternoon. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden boast a staggering 40 to 50 hour school week, making some American education reforms re-think they way the write guidelines for the nation’s schools. This morning to early afternoon school schedule gives children the opportunity to engage in some extra-curricular activities, such as soccer, tennis, or art. This is good, since the child can venture out and find something that he or she is good at, however the benefits of this are only short-term for they don’t really help the child progress further academically. The U. S needs to lengthen the school day to emphasize the fact that fun and games aren’t everything, and children should engage in something educational after school, to help them in their studies.When summer rolls around in early to mid June, all the material that is learned over the year is quickly forgotten as the lack of practice takes effect. The three month stretch serves as an education eraser, as the typical student forgets about two months of material, commonly called summer leaning loss. American scholars noticed however that this isn’t true for all American children. Children coming from poor families tend to do worse academically because of weak family bonds and are therefore more susceptible to learning loss.Richer kids, on the other hand, improve, for their parents send them to camps and classes to stimulate their minds, and encourage them to do something productive over the summer. The importance of learning in enabling the individual to put his potentials to optimal use is self-evident. Without education, the training of the human minds is incomplete. No individual is a human being in the working world until he has been educated in the proper sense. Now Im not saying youre not a human being without education. The mind was made to be trained and without education, a person is incomplete in that sense.Education makes man a right thinker and a correct decision-maker. It achieves this by bringing him knowledge from the external world, teaching him to reason, and acquainting him with past history, so that he may be a better judge of the present. Without education, man, as it were, is shut up in a windowless room. With education, he finds himself in a room with all its windows open to the outside world. In other words, people who are not educated have less opportunity to do what they want to do. A person that gets a good education will become a more dependable worker, a better citizen, and a stronger consumer.For example, people would rather higher an educated man rather than a non-educated person. When looking at the long-term effects of an education, our economy needs these educated people to know how to keep the economy efficient and not get into a bind in the future. Someone said if they were Bill Gates ( Since he is very educated), would he understand the economy better? Of course not but thats not what I am trying to say. How advanced do you think the computer would be without him? The more educated someone is, the more knowledge one obtains on different subjects.Each person has a different level of understanding for each subject there is to learn about. That is why there are experts in every field you could go into and each part is a piece of the puzzle that makes this world/economy grow. Education for me starts at the most basic of levels, the home. From the time we are old enough to walk and talk we observe and mimmick the actions of those around us. By the time we begin school we already have an openess or close mindedness to learning new things. How we are encouraged in our youth by the adult influences determines if a child has the confidence in him/herself to want to do well in school.This is reinforced when a child does well they are praised and rewarded for their efforts. There are many ways our communities across the state are affected by how well our children are educated. One example of how we are affected is the correlation between the high school dropout rate and the unemployment rate in North Carolina which in turn affects the crime rate. Its no surprise that the crime rate is connected to the dropout rate because 85% of all drug and burglary crimes committed are between the ages of 16-30 and 60% of these have reported dropping out of school.Without the proper education individuals are forced to live lives of crime simply because they were never encouraged or came from a household where the parents themselves werent highly educated and thus didnt push the need to learn on the child. This affects us all because the more we leave behind the less oppurtunity we have as a community to better our selves and change the notion that being smart isnt cool or the right way to be thus giving our communities across the state more individuals who care about educating its people and building our neighborhoods for the future.I dont believe that we are all affected directly by the issue of education in this country because all of us dont come from areas where poverty is a common thing. I believe that the individuals who have to come from these backgrounds are at a disadvantage from an academic standpoint because they are not afforded the same oppurtunities as those who attend private schools. Over the past several years, reforms have been made to several hundred schools across the country.These schools, part of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) start the school day at 7. 30am and end at 5pm, and have more instructional days than the average American school. These fortunate students get 60% more education than the average American child. The county’s economy is also tied with education. A recent report from McKinsey, a management consultancy, emphasizes that the ghastly performance of the country’s school children has caused more devastation on the economy than the recession.Barrack Obama has urged school administrators to â€Å"rethink the school day†, arguing that â€Å"we can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home ploughing the land at the end of each day. †America needs to ‘buck up it’s act, if it want to remain the most powerful and influential country in the world, by ensuring the education of its future generations. When summer rolls around in early to mid June, all the material that is learned over the year is quickly fo rgotten as the lack of practice takes effect. The three month stretch serves as an ‘education eraser’, as the typical student forgets about two months of material. American scholars noticed however that this isn’t true for all American children. Children coming from poor families tend to do worse academically because of weak family bonds and are therefore more susceptible to learning loss. Richer kids, on the other hand, improve, for their parents send them to camps and classes to stimulate their minds, and encourage them to do something productive over the summer.As Americas education is slowly regressing, it must reconsider the lifestyle of its youth because in the near future they could be left unemployed. Countries such as India are gaining up on America because of their value placed on education and work ethic, replacing Americans in a lot of professions. To stop this from happening we must re-evaluate the culture of our youth, Education is Americas past, present, future. Education in America is boiling away like water in a heated pan. Education is the basis of our society as we need it to strive in this world.Education is evaporating in America as 12th-graders recently tested below the international average for 21 countries in mathematics and science. If amends arent made to global education the world will begin a slow, spiraling, descent toward an inevitable oblivion. In Mathematics About one-third of the fourth-graders and one-fifth of the eighth-graders cannot perform basic mathematical computations. One of the reasons our youth is unable succeed like its competition is because of the schooling of their teachers.As some of us might know there are serious problem with the education of our teachers. In 45 states 640,000 children who wanted to take science and math courses could not do so for lack of teachers. Education in Asia is growing rapidly as it replaces jobs of Americans. Education in Asia is on the verge of exploding to its peak. Education is the road to triumph. In countries like India the young are packed off to coaching classes to prepare them for entry into the competitive colleges.Americans also have the shortest school day, a mere six and half hours, all packed into the morning and early afternoon. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden boast a staggering 40 to 50 hour school week, making some American education reforms re-think the way they write guidelines for the nation’s schools. If this blatent disregaurg for education continues I believe we will begin to lose the respect of many other countries as being innovative, nurishing creativity and, ingenuity hindering us in the global markets as all of the world will surpass our abilities and the great minds the U.S. is known for will be far and few between affecting our economic, academic, and social standing in the world. When faced with the problem of educating the youth and ensuring their future their are a few solutions I think of that would drastically change our outlook in the world rankings and more importantly our communities. The first would be to increase the school day and the school year. The U. S needs to lengthen the school day to emphasize the fact that fun and games aren’t everything, and children should engage in something educational after school, to help them in their studies. I am also for continued education during the summer, and this is where other educational opportunities could be incorporated that cant be fit in during the regular school year, those things that are now on the chopping block and which help to make a well rounded individual. Education should be thought of as a total education including those areas beyond the hard academics, especially for those students that do not fit into the academic mold. These students should have other learning challenges they can look forward to, as well as possibly learning other skills that would make them employable.Other jobs that dont require a college education are just as important, and an educational system should encourage and help students find their niche. Another example would be to change the English program to really learn how to read with comprehension; articles, newspapers, documents, financial agreements, leases, and the like of which they will encounter, being able to speak to a minimal degree about what was read, and definitely in various situations with other people and, writing in different capacities, from the letter, to the resume, to the term paper.