by Samantha Jones

Created on: January 05, 2011

Public schoolingin the United States was one of the greatest ideas ever to be conceived of. The idea that every child in this country should have the opportunity to be educated and readied for their adult lives is a magnificent idea, but like most things in this country, that great idea has been turned into a whole lot of nothing.

Most students in public schools learn only what is mandated that they learn, regardless of what each individual student might be better at learning or doing, or what their actual future goals and interests are. If a student is poor in math, but excels in English and wants to be a writer, not a mathematician, that student should be taught all the skills he or she will need to become a writer, and not have his or her time wasted by learning math skills that they will never use, and don't want to use. Yes, there is basic knowledge that all students should learn about and know about, things that will make life make more sense and allow us as a country to have an overall educated mass of people, but at the same time, public schools are wasting time and money teaching every single child the same thing, when not every child wants to do the same thing in life.

Public schools teach our children virtually nothing that they will be able to use in life to earn money, or find a job that will hire them for their specific skills. A child who wants to be a doctor is instead shoved into a room and made to read Shakespeare when that will not help him at all in his future pursuits. People are graduating from high school unsure of where to go or what to do, with only the most vague knowledge of what the outside world is about and what they will need to know in order to go out into that world. They are not being taught skills but instead useless facts that will get them nowhere and only lead to terrible disappointment.

Public schools need to be changed in order to help save the millions of young adults every years from graduated with nothing, no knowledge of how to go out and get a good paying job, and no way of doing so without putting themselves into debt going to a secondary school. Public schools should be readying these young adults for secondary school and getting them more than started on their future career paths, instead of hindering them by pretending each person needs the same education and that each person will be doing the exact same thing in life. There needs to be better choices for individuals, more diverse classes and actual training not just education, so that when young adult graduate every year they will not be shoved out into the world blind and confused, but with an actual knowledge of how to survive in this world in the year 2011.

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