Weaknesses and Problems in the American Educational System

Education in America is not as effective as it should be because of a number of problems inherent within the system. Because of the way issues of political and social differences have infiltrated educational policy and decision-making, students are not being offered a sound way of dealing with diversity or understanding how to manage differences.

Furthermore, in the midst of more large scale debates centering upon sociopolitical questions, there are more concrete problems that are not being dealt with such as the issue of cheating in schools and even the imbalance and potential unfairness of the grading system. In many cases, it seems that the problems in the schools are related to an inability to make important decisions about the future of education in America. Instead of focusing on the areas of true and immediate significant importance and value, time is being wasted by infighting and indecision. Instead of wasting time of these debates, the larger issues that have an effect on the system as a whole and outcome of educated young people should be addressed and these other side arguments should be saved until a time comes that education in America is improved.

One of the problems with the American education system is that it has yet to form a consensus about the role of religion in the classroom. While this is not a statement meant to argue whether or not religion has a valid place in the public schools, it is fair to state that this is certainly an area of contention as opposing sides attempt to standardize how religion is treated, particularly in textbooks. Because of a lack of agreement, proponents on both sides use litigation and other actions to determine religion’s status in schools and this has caused textbook publishers and other educational entities to have to take a dramatic stance. For instance, some argue that the efforts to stay away from this debate “has pushed textbook publishers to excise religion altogether, even from history class. It is not just the teaching of religion that has become taboo…It is the teaching of religion” 

No matter where one stands in the midst of this controversy, it is necessary to at least admit that a large portion of Western history revolves around religious ideas.  As a result of this fact, it seems as though these textbook publishers who are afraid to include anything of a religious nature are doing students a disservice since they are denying the legitimate reasons for many historical and social truths of history. In other words, political correctness and oversensitivity about religious issues have clouded education and caused students to have a rather skewed view of society since they are only being offered a rather whitewashed version of it.

When Goodman suggests that American schoolchildren need to be taught the importance of diversity by stating, “it is not that Americans deny their differences or always resolve them, but that we have managed, until now, to live with them” (1) she makes an important point about diverse thinking. As her statement also makes clear, American education cannot gloss over history and society without cheating students out of a deeper understanding of differences in opinion. By offering young people only one narrow way of thinking because of political reasons, it limits their scope and ability to deal with such social difference later in life.Education is not becoming more ineffective simply because of political wrangling about the role of religion in schools, but also because there is a lack of understanding about moral issues, such as plagiarism. While its another argument entirely about whether or not the two are interdependent in some ways (religion and simple morals/ethics) it is noteworthy that there is a lack of ethical stringency in schools. When it has been suggested that out of the top American students many cheated and had ambivalent views about it, it becomes clear that there is a lapse in ethical lapse in the system itself.

According to one of the statistics in “Their Cheating Hearts” by William Raspberry, “80 percent had engaged in academic cheating and thought cheating was commonplace. Moreover, most saw cheating as a minor infraction”