Education
Education is the most heatedly discussed issue nowadays. Much attention is paid to this field and measures are being taken to improve it throughout the whole country every year. However, many citizens complain that their children cannot receive the proper education. This paper discusses the factors that reduce the rates of the educational system’s development in the USA.
In Chapter 3, Spring discusses the issue of the distribution of costs for education which has become a very serious problem during the last few decades. The two major points of the chapter are the following: 1. People want to pay little but to get maximum benefits from schools; 2. Parents who send their children to private schools do not want to pay the double tuition (the tuition required by private schools and taxes for developing public ones). The described dilemmas have become the obstacles for the development of public schools in poor districts since parents there cannot afford monetary help for educating their children.
The two mentioned issues provoke the contemplations of what is more important: personal (if people pay less tax, they are wealthier) or public (good education reduces the rates of criminal activity and poverty) well-being. The author maintains that public benefits always provide the personal ones. The bigger number of children is educated the bigger number of good workers the country will get. As a consequence, the country and all its citizens will become richer.
The issue also has a connection with policy. People support the leaders who demand lower taxes, so politicians would rather contribute less to the development of schools in poor districts and maintain their positions. As a result, the citizens do not like the society they live in, but they do not want to help change it.
Chapter 4 of the book touches upon the issues of exerting power through education and professionals involved in the educational system aiming to make money. Bureaucracy in education is the source of conflicts between the authorities and educational establishment administrators. The authorities create curricula and rules which they think would be best for children. Teachers and school principals disagree with some of the rules and duties demanded by federal bodies, and begin to disobey. The willingness of the public (including teachers who are direct witnesses of how curricula offered by state and local bodies work) to contribute to the educational system is also resisted.
The problem is based on the following fact: nobody wants to share the power, since the more power one has, the more money one gets. The consequences are negative for the quality of the education provided by schools, since all the effort is focused on preserving the power and defeating opponents instead of thinking of what can be done for children.
Chapter 5 is dedicated to the discussion of the relationship between the political organization of schools and student achievements, as well as the influence of the equality of educational opportunity on children’s success at school. The two major issues presented in the chapter are the following: 1. Students will have better achievements if schools are granted more freedom; 2. The representatives of racial, ethnic and national minorities are seldom chosen to be the members of the boards which regulate the activities at schools .
The first issue is connected with the problem mentioned in the previous chapter. The conditions are different in different schools (the equipment, numbers of teachers and students, their ethnicity, nationality, social and financial status), so the federal and local authorities should take into consideration the opinion of school principals, teachers, and parents instead of concentrating on preserving their power. The second issue reflects that, firstly, the country is not yet fully democratic and, secondly, those who have more power and money control education.
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