Time to pop those addys and chug your cancer in a can. Its finals week baby! By now most of us have already experienced a break down or two just from the mental stress of cramming months’ worth of seemingly pointless information we will soon forget. In honor of finals week I would love nothing more than to take a quick look at how sh**ty our education system is. I say “quick” because pointing out every flaw in our education system would be a book denser than a Charles Dickens novel. All in all, the system is a damn joke. Well at least in the land of the free and home of the brave, it is.
According to an article in the Huffington Post titled "Study: US Education Spending Tops Global List," “United States spent $15,171 on each young person in the system – more than any other nation." In addition, according to Pearson, “the United States has a “cognitive skills and educational attainment” score of 0.39, which makes the United States rank fourteenth out of forty countries ranked in that category.” USA! USA! USA! The amount U.S. spends per student annually stands at the top alongside countries with great education systems like Denmark. So why the disappointing results? Well, that's because our funding is extremely unbalanced. The government will pamper and give enormous amounts of money to the richer areas while they couldn't give a rats ass about students trapped in lower class communities.
First thing first: it's absurd we were all forced to function at the crack of dawn just to learn the fundamentals of being a basic human being. I didn’t grow up with much money thanks to my parents' poor life decisions and teenage drug addictions. So without any surprise I went to a public school that reflected those unfortunate circumstances, thanks to the property tax-school funding dilemma. So basically, in the eyes of the government, if your parents are sh**ty then theres a good chance you are too. So why polish a turd? Allow me to explain before you deem me an outspoken a**hole.
The way our education system receives its funding is fairly complicated to understand. Obviously public schools receive funding quite differently than private schools. Private schools aren’t necessarily a part of the problem; they survive just fine from their outrageous tuition costs and alumni donations, which in turn provide a higher quality education for their “prestigious” students. Public schools gain their funding from their communities along with some government help. However, much of their funding comes from tax revenue gained from the surrounding properties.
Many politicians are fighting this dilemma by saying school funding should be in the hands of the state, as it should be the state’s responsibility to spread out the funds evenly. While the narrow-minded politicians claim property tax school funding is essential to local government. Can you see the problem, yet? Schools in richer neighborhoods and surrounding areas receive more funding, While schools with financially disadvantaged students keep receiving little in comparison. This is the reason for such a huge gap in our country's education system. On one side you have financially well-off students doing great and the other side being the poverty stricken students not meeting the bare minimum.
Public schools at the bottom stay at the bottom struggling to survive. While “rich schools” continue to receive the appropriate amount of money to fund their staff, facilities and equipment. So why are standardized tests used to measure us all against each other the same for everyone when the resources provided are not? Also, don’t get me started on tests. They are the main component we use to determine a student’s worth. That’s a whole other beast we are dealing with because it’s a test on memory and not ability. Plus, it’s hard to blame a student for poor study habits when their surrounding environment is more hopeless than their dreams. So unless you can afford a pretentious private school you're stuck going to a public school. Hopefully you live in a decent area.
Lastly, good luck to all my fellow classmates out there trying to pay for college. At least the system acknowledges how broke it is by awarding some of us with financial aid. What about the rest of the students who fall in this gray area between poor and whose parents are rich enough to pay their child’s way through school? Yet again we discover another gaping hole that promotes inequality in our education system. It’s funny how our government spends more money on military than the betterment of its own people. Three point eight trillion dollars for our military compared to spending just a little over a 100 billion for education. We can cut our military budget by a small percent to pay for higher education for every student. Don’t worry conservatives, we will still have enough money to stick our noses in every country that doesn’t conform to our policies. I can go on and on, but for those that care, do some research instead of mindlessly accepting any situation. Yeah, but what do I know? I only went to public school.
