I am upset. I am full of pure, genuine, unadulterated, (I'm good at synonyms) anger.

You’re probably asking, “Alaina, why are you upset?” Well, look at the title of the article and you can probably figure that out, but I will also let you know because it is necessary and some other synonyms.

Now, some quick background about why I am upset, and other words: I am a secondary education major with an English emphasis hoping to teach high school sophomores and juniors. Sounds fine, right? Yeah, probably. College is great and full of learning, which is necessary for success in my chosen profession. I went to a public high school in the city that I grew up in and was lucky enough to have teachers that helped me reach a high level of success in education, but not everybody is as lucky as I was.

There is a great deal wrong with the education system in the United States, especially when looking at public education. Aside from funding and national standards (please, don’t try to justify Common Core), there is one problem that needs to be addressed ASAP. Traditionalist teaching methods, those that inherently ensure that visual learners find success before others, are skewed for those who have historically had access to steady education. This is found most prominently within secondary education where students are in a place where they need to make serious decisions about their post-graduation life. These outdated methods are used regularly and need to be changed immediately.

This flawed learning that is perpetuated by the public schooling system is fetishized to the point where the problem is brushed under the rug and seen as normal.

Traditionalist methods have been used in schooling since the inception of regularly accessible education. Approximately 400 years have gone by since then and things have remained the same (that’s a problem). According to a 2012 Huffington Post article that analyzed a study conducted by the US Department of Education, many schools around the nation are more segregated now than they were during the Jim Crow south. The article reads,

“80 percent of Latino students and 74 percent of black students are in schools where the majority of students are not white. More specifically, 43 percent of Latinos and 38 percent of black attend “intensely segregated schools” where white students comprise 10 percent or less of the student body”.

This shocking statistic reveals that segregation, especially when relating to race, is still prevalent in society today. The fun (not so fun) thing about this is that government and other officials have recognized the problem, but are reluctant to make any changes. Usually, the US government functions under the world-known “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mantra, but it has been proven time and time again that these methods are very broken and demand repair in order to effectively mold our future world leaders.

Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed , specifically calls out these flawed teaching methods being utilized and states they are the main problem with the public education system in the United States. He writes, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat.”

This method that is called out by Freire is one of the main reasons why education has become compartmentalized – demanding flawed methods that ensure the failure of 2/3s of students that cannot access learning through auditory practices. This means that students who learn through visual and kinesthetic practices are basically guaranteed failure under the current functions of the education system.

More than just students are affected by these teaching methods, though; they also affect those around them in many different ways.

Parents

Parents are affected indirectly more than they are any other way. Though the success of parents usually set up a self-fulfilling prophecy for their child’s educational success, that cycle can be broken – both positively and negatively. If a parent was successful in school, the child’s educational success usually reflects that.

Teachers

Teachers are affected in a couple of different ways. First, aside from the fact that many see teachers as glorified babysitters (insert eye roll here), they are the individuals that present the learning materials. If teachers do not recognize when some students are falling behind and why, then they are essentially failing their students – though that may not be their intentions. The other way that they are affected is through student success and how that is reflected on the efficiency of the teacher. If a large amount of the class does not do well, that is directly reflected on the teacher, even though it is not directly their fault. This is putting many jobs on the line for teachers across America and is a key reason why the teacher shortage is more real now than it ever has been.

The government fosters traditionalist teaching methods, and a big part of that is because a majority of politicians went to private schools and can also retain information that is taught via traditionalist methods. Though the government is trying to change the way that teaching happens, i.e Common Core Standards, they are not implementing a sustainable change that a majority of students can access. Instead, they are creating an environment where the teacher has a hard time teaching the curriculum and secures failure for the student.

These are real and terrifying problems, which is why the time to reform is now.

I was lucky enough to get a quality public education from teachers who knew how to teach to a diverse population, but that is not the case for much of America. �We need to act now if any change is going to happen. I am angry. I am upset. I am full of synonyms that I can use, but not everybody is that lucky.