As I look around a 5th-grade classroom, I see an overwhelmed teacher teaching a class of over 50 students crammed into a classroom that seats 20. To add on, the classroom is flooded with unsharpened pencils, markers missing caps, and loose-leaf papers all over the floor all of which the teacher purchased with her own salary. Alongside her, I see a dozen children with language barriers and learning disabilities.
As a tutor for a local elementary school, I have seen first hand the state of today’s education system. It is truly a sign of distress and tragedy in our nation that needs to be addressed immediately.
One of the main issues of the National Education Policy is financing. Due to shortages of funding, many schools are unable to provide separate classes for children with language barriers and learning disabilities. So while a teacher is trying to teach a class, she has the make sure that each child’s accommodations are met. Some of these accommodations include the use of a calculator, dictionary, and having someone read the students questions out loud. This alone takes up valuable learning time and the ability of children to focus. As if trying to make sure no one talked and listened during class wasn’t hard enough!
Another problem funding brings is the inability to provide students and teachers with adequate school supplies. Many teachers have to use their hard-earned money, which isn’t a lot, to make sure their students have basic supplies such as pencils and paper.
Standardized test scores have become a popular way for the government to determine how much funding a school receives. Instead of focusing on what a child is learning and whether they understand what is going on in the classroom, students’ academic life is focused on passing a test. Most of this time, students learn material for a test and immediately forget it. In primary school education, it is essential that students solidify their basics as it will carry them through the entirely of the academic and professional careers.
The overdiagnosis of ADD and ADHD has also become a problem in elementary school students across the nation. Many assume that when a child has trouble focusing, it automatically means they have a disorder. However, what many people fail to realize that all children have trouble focusing. Children would rather go outside and play than stay indoors studying all day. To add on that, when it comes to studying or working, most adults have trouble focusing and find a way to procrastinate. Instead of assuming a child has a learning disability, identifying child’s strengths and weaknesses and how they study best is a better, and healthier, alternative.
This is the reality of many inner city schools today: an overwhelmed teacher, a job to raise standardized test scores and students who aren’t learning amidst all the chaos. While these are just a few of the problems of today’s education system, they are important issues that need to be addressed. Children are our future and giving them the tools to succeed and learn is of the utmost importance.
