Synthesis

There are many problems facing high school education these days, but most prominent are the issues of whether or not high school is preparing students for life after college and if high school is providing enough responsibility to keep children challenged and in school. High school education in today’s society focuses on many different subjects, not all of which are important to peoples’ future careers. While some information on these disregardable topics would be acceptable, not all of it is necessary. Much of it is not even challenging to some children. They see high school as useless and slack off because there is not enough responsibility for them. Failing does not come back to bite people as much until they drop out or are expelled from the school.

Life after college is going to be rough for many students today. They are not being properly taught useful skills they will need to know, like how mass media has affected and is affecting our culture and how this will endure or diminish over time. This is something that should be taught to all students, as it will help these high school students to perceive the trends in the media, which has taken over today’s society as we are exposed to thousands of pieces of the media every month (source 3). Learning about liberal arts will, at the very least, help prepare the students for college and provide them with a better understanding of themselves and their history. Providing a basis of topics that are imperative for the students to learn before they enter life after college would be a great way to keep them interested. They need to learn things that will be applicable to their lives and not subjects that are not going to apply to their careers (i.e. learning physics when you are going to be a language arts teacher). Students must also be challenged by this new information being presented.

High school students will lose interest in the material they are supposed to be learning if there is no responsibility being placed on them to learn it. This in itself can challenge students, but they are not being provided with the challenge they need to keep them interested. The Gateway experiment in Portland, Oregon shows that with enough responsibility being placed on them, even students that appear to have problems (low grade-point averages and possible personal dilemmas) will be able to pick themselves up and work hard enough to be able to obtain an associate’s degree (source 4). With evidence like this study, it is proven that students need to have responsibility placed on them just as it is in the real world to challenge them and make them more well-rounded people. As of 2003, the United States, when given a standardized math test, was ranked twenty eighth out of forty countries, showing that the America is over-simplifying some of the topics that are being taught (source 5). Providing more of a challenge in core subjects, if nothing else, will make students more able to easily work out easy problems and show them how to handle difficult real-world challenges.

There are many issues with today’s education system. Students are not being taught real-world skills that they will need for their lives after college. They are also not being challenged to the full extent, ranking lower than twenty seven other countries in mathematics. The United States needs new types of schools to teach students the skills they will need to get through life while providing an acceptable, gradual challenge for them. This will ensure that they are not overwhelmed by school and that its difficulty level will seem moderate but manageable. Given a significant amount of responsibility, students can succeed in school and later in life.