The Problem with High School
Hint: the solution isn’t giving students iPads
High school in the United States is severely flawed.
For decades, the national conversation around education reform have largely been centered on standardizing content and curriculum, keeping teachers and schools accountable to the performance of their students, and getting students into college. That’s led to policies like the Common Core, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind, and their related agendas.
The problem with that focus is that it glosses over the other problems with high school today that are far more fundamental than a simple change in policy can fix. Curriculum content in schools is geared towards tests, not real world applicability or interest from students. The general pedagogy of the classroom — a lecture based model where students practice rote memorization and little else— is outdated. Focusing on graduation rates and college acceptance rates brainwashes people into believing that going to a traditional four year university is the only way to succeed in life. Anxiety and depression rates among adolescents have skyrocketed in the last several years alone.
It’s a flawed system that was designed decades ago to meet the needs of a society in the throes of the Industrial Revolution. Now, it’s no longer able to meet the…
