by Jacquie Clark

Created on: January 29, 2010

It's a sad truth that the American education system is in a steady state of decline. Even with an increasingly limited job market, an astonishing number of adolescents are still choosing not to attend college, and an astonishing number of the professional adults we do have are leaving the US for other countries. Many exchange students surpass their fellow students in the United States, even with- in some cases- difficulties in the English language.

The reality is that if something doesn't change in the Untied States within the next 50 years, it will lose its place as a world power. Unfortunately, no significant repairs can be made with any real immediacy. Therefore, the wisest thing that adults living in America can hope to do for her right now is to entirely rebuild education, while instilling in student the importance of helping the country.

The first step towards an overhaul of American education is to place the power of controlling education within the federal government. The founding fathers had a positive idea in giving this right to the states. After all, the greatest fear during that time was of an autocratic government. In addition, the various regions of the country were, for many years, unconnected, highly sectionalist, and with very different economies. However, modern technology and the steady increase of industrialism since the War of 1812 have set the US nearly into equilibrium. Therefore, there is no real need for state-controlled education at this point in time. Furthermore, great discrepancies in the quality of education systems in different parts of the country have begun to cripple America. After all, certain parts of the south have yet to fully recover from the Civil War, leaving children educated in those areas with relatively limited opportunities as adults.

If the national government were to regulate education, on the other hand, students would be virtually equal across the country, leading to a more stable society and more even job field. Also, having the education in America controlled by the federal government, rather than by fifty different state governments, allows further changes to be made more or less simultaneously throughout the country.

The second change to take place should be a reduction in vacation time for student. While most teacher vehemently oppose such a change, one must question whether the strength of the country or individual vacation time should take precedence. As with state-controlled education, there was a time

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