School In The US

Many people consider the United States to be the top of the world in most things. It’s true we are the biggest country in many different ways, but our country is severely lacking in education. By most sources I have looked into, we are ranked about 14th in the world for reading, 25th for math, and 17th for science. I think one of our biggest reasons as to why we are ranked so low is because of the difference of schools in different areas and the overall access of everyone in the country to a quality education. Another reason I think we are so behind is because of the way the leaders of this country think to teach us and assess our skills. I remember standardized tests and nightly homework since late elementary and early middle school. Since I moved to the Silicon Valley that has all grown tremendously. The teachers and staff at this school think that if they don’t assign enough homework we won’t learn anything and if we don’t do frequent standardized tests then everything were doing is ineffective or not working. School shouldn’t be so stressful and competitive. Maybe the reason we have so many school shootings isn’t just mental health or gun laws. Maybe it’s how the schools run and treat people and what they expect out of us. Another reason I think our country has such poor education is because of the price of colleges and private schools. For example a school like Santa Clara University is $60,000+ a year and out of state like U of O is 50,000+ a year. Most people can’t afford this, especially without immense loans. Finland is Ranked 2nd in the world for education, they have free college, it is illegal for schools to be different from each other or offer different things, private schools of any kind are illegal and you can not charge tuition for any school. They go to school for less time in a day and in a week than people in the US. They have no nightly homework and do no standardized testing. They don’t require bathroom passes or hall passes, they just let the kids do whatever is necessary. Maybe we should stop focusing on minor changes to gun laws and make some large changes to our educational system.