The Frightening Truth About The Fall Of Education
Over the past five years, there have been many predictions of a significant decline in education. Most high school graduates are not able to pursue further college education. This is due to many factors both environmental and educational. However, this is greatly affecting our country and its productivity. The competence of American students may decline in the next ten to fifteen years with a continuous increase in ratio of high school graduates to college graduates.
According to recent research and statistics, the competence of American children enrolled in grades kindergarten through twelfth grade shows a significant decline. The longer students spend time in school, the begin to get bored and often feel burnt out and fed up. In recent research, outcomes have shown that fourth grade students typically ranked the highest in the science and math categories of the International Test of Mathematics and Science Study or TIMMS. As they enter eighth grade, the statistics declined. By the age of 17, those statistics dropped even further.
According to a report issued by the Educational Testing Service, after looking at the International Adult Literacy Survey, Americans barely reach the international literacy average. The survey population encompassed individuals ages 16 to 65; The United States only ranked 12th overall. Although a large part of the annual budget is concentrated on education in America, the competence of children and young adults are not anywhere near superior as other democratic countries.
American Literacy ranking has declined over the decades. Those who went to school in the 60?s ranked third overall and slipped to a ranking of fifth in the 70?s. By the last decade of the 20th century, Americans ranked fourteenth.
Speculated reasons have served as a justifiable excuse to this decline, leading to blame being placed on immigrants for pulling down the scores of American citizens.
However, immigration is not just confined to The United States. Other countries that have become home to immigrants have still managed to maintain and provide a high quality of education to their juvenile and adult students.
At the same time, Europeans have been able to expand their educational systems over the past five decades due to increased test scores and secondary school graduates. The number of high school graduates has also declined in the past few decades including college and university students. This then tells us that although the blow may not be felt overnight, it may hurt us in the long run.
With the changing world and new information rapidly being brought to the surface, the attention span of children and those who are frequently exposed to media are not encouraged to read anymore. The information that they acquire are saturated, thus keeping only a few vocabulary words and taking in only information that television, radio and mainstream media has provided them.
The in-depth knowledge and research of children are not harnessed. They are used to getting things done quickly where even information is cut off into tiny snippets with only sedimentary information.
Text messaging has also impaired the spelling ability of youth, forgetting proper English grammar and spelling by cutting down words into just a few characters and numbers. With the information sent to their mobile phones and laptops, chances of youth going to a library and actually reading a book are very slim. Decline in attention span may be a significant reason why many students are not reading anymore. That in itself, in conjunction with other reasons, may be affecting American literacy greatly.
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