Part-5
Building 21th Century Education System
Quoted from an article from The Aspen Institute – School is supposed to prepare young people to navigate a complex, economically competitive and global society. But the United States doesn’t fully prepare students for this future. The current K-12 system emphasized academics at the expense of social and emotional skills that are just as essential for students to thrive. With the help of teachers, parents and students in communities across the country, The Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development is re-envisioning what constitutes success in schools.
Seventy-five percent of the words that happy students use to describe how they feel at school are negative. Students most commonly report they are tired, stressed and bored. 9 out of 10 teachers believe social and emotional skills can be taught and that they benefit students, 4 in 5 teachers want more support to address students’ social and emotional development. 8 in 10 employers say social and emotional are the most important to success and yet are also the hardest to find. Supporting students social-emotional development produces an 11% gain in grades and test scores. Integrating social and emotional development with academic learning returns $11.00 for every $1.00 invested.
When you look around the world, other countries have better education evaluations then ours, along with lower percentages of poverty. We are the opposite and that needs to end. Poverty hinders education growth and only hinders our society’s advancement both socially and economically. Not only that, but, it’s also a loss for our society and the people that we lose, just because of our ignorance and our racism. It is hindering our country in ways we don’t even understand.
Stresses and adversities in the home degrade a child’s talents and abilities making them less likely to be open to learning. Stress levels in a home are highly detrimental to a young child. And this also can be contributed to the parents’ education and financial situation as well. There should be new parent learning programs. Giving new parents a better start with their children, starting with interactive reading and teaching skills. Parents should understand being involved with their child’s early education and teaching creates a bond with them and builds confidence and responsibility in their children early on.
Other learning disadvantage for children early on is being homeless. This creates multiple problems in their lives that can make learning near impossible. This is a detriment on society. Trying to teach social issues and how to challenge themselves becomes problematic and should be a high priority for society. This creates not only economic disadvantage for people but on society as well, and the country.
When students feel better, they are happier and they then do better naturally. Pressure to succeed should not, or is not a healthy culture. Learning needs to be fun and interesting and learning flows more easily early on. All students should feel that they belong no matter who they maybe. Social learning is just as important as academics.
As students move to the larger education campus, they can start to learn about all the different careers that are open to them. At this time classes on God and religion should start, including their knowledge of the world’s different religions. Helping students know they were born for a reason and a purpose in life and helping them find their own personal purposes and talents in the creating of their own lives.
Building a true society that is progressive and inclusive to all, not just a few preferred, by a certain part of society, I believe this could alleviate a high percentage of society’s problems of poverty and those undesirable areas of our cities, in addition I would like to see a small group of educators travel the country studying innovative education programs that are helping students in other communities around the country.
Bring back a stream of educational ideas our schools can explore, keeping us on the cutting edge of a state’s education knowledge base. The people doing this would change every three years or so, giving the group a fresh new outlook.
“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant” – Maximilien Robespiene 1791