Guggenheim did a commendable job when he attempted to diagnose the causes of educational malpractice in the
American public school system with its 14,500+ independent school districts, 3.2 million teachers, and an estimated annual expenditure of $600 billion to educate 55 million K-12 students.
As an Asian child, he was a pariah in the
American public school system. Picked on and bullied, Koji found solace in the sounds of rock monsters AC/DC and Black Sabbath.
They marshal data to prove that the
American public school system is doing much better than its critics would have you believe.
It has become rather fashionable, on all sides of the political spectrum, to bemoan the failed
American public school system and to envy the education systems in Japan, Germany and other industrialized countries.
The
American public school system uses a battery of standardized tests as a means of assessing students.
To be sure, the
American public school system embodies a humanistic tradition in which truth is not regarded as revealed and absolute but as tentative and subject to change in light of new information.
Among the greatest glories of the
American public school system has been its ability to take children from every conceivable background, bring them into the social mainstream and educate most of them to a competent, and often a high, level of literacy.
Many social critics in the United States point to inadequate funding, poor faculty and facilities, and the socio-economic conditions of urban areas as reasons for the decline in the
American public school system; however, compared with my Nigerian experience, Northwestern High School had a much more educated faculty and better-equipped facilities.
Nearly 10 years have passed since "A National At Risk" rocked the
American public school system with its accusation of "unilateral educational disarmament." In the intervening decade, the report's warning has been taken to heart as two distinct but overlapping philosophies have emerged to attack the shortcomings in education performance cited in the report.
"The 12th grade, as it's currently organized and operated in the
American public school system, is probably the single biggest wasteland that I know about," Reed says.
The work of Charles Glenn of Boston College has shown that the
American public school system never truly embraced a secularized "common school" conception of the public good.
For example: I happen to be a fan of, a believer in, a passionate defender of the
American public school system.