Introduction: 

          Have you ever been in an English class, wondering why you just read a text, write an essay about it, read another text, highlight a little bit of a paragraph, write another essay, and then read another text? It’s torture. But this problem isn’t exclusive to English class. Grades, extracurriculars, national tests, and endless lectures about seeming disconnected events in history. They all feel just like that English class. But alongside those feelings are a bit of corruption, unfair wages, and biased opinions that are added to the equation. Today we're going to analyze exactly what makes the United States of America’s system one of the most problematic education systems in the world. First, we'll open our textbooks to chapter 67 to look at the history of our education system. Second, we'll look at the impact of it on both students and teachers, as written on the whiteboard. Finally, we'll have a class discussion on the implications of school system corruption on youth and educators today. 

 

The History of the U.S. Education System: 

          So, let's get started with the first lesson, "The History of the US Education System." The history of learning is as old as time itself, with every culture and country making it unique, through mediums like experience or communication, like today’s world. Sometimes people take it from holy books, like the Bible or Quran. Sometimes, people learn everything through the news. Now, while schools today exist for almost everyone across the world, this wasn’t always the case. For the most part in history, education was something only nobles, royalty, and the rich could afford. The first form of public education created in the US was the Boston Latin School, a school for boys founded in 1635, which is still running today. The institution primarily taught philosophies, humanities, and, oddly enough, Latin was not the primary idea there, however they did emphasize Latin and Greek as priorities among the students. The school’s purpose was to prepare boys for college, which was going to be founded shortly after in 1636: Harvard was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, according to The Harvard Library, the school taught students Puritan values as well as the fundamentals of geometry, politics, and basic logic. They were expected to arrive with a basic knowledge of Latin and were taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as the other characteristics mentioned. Harvard’s founding marked a significant step toward formal higher education in the colonies. 

Moving forward 185 years to 1821, we encounter the first public school in the United States: the English High School. Here, they taught the usual arts and sciences, as well as things that would ready the graduates for the world of industry and commerce, as credited by englishhighalumni.org. It’s highly important because, as mentioned before, it was the first public school in the US, setting a path for all others after. Now, this statement might seem contradictory to the proposed argument regarding our education system, which it is, as these educational milestones discussed, set the stage for a lot of structural issues we currently face in our society today. 

 

Impact of standardized testing:

          Moving on to one of the most contentious aspects of our current education system. During your 4 year long stay in high school, at some point you must take the ACT, and possibly the SAT. I, personally, got a 30 out of 36 on the Pre-ACT—a score I’m proud of--but unlike me, there are many out there who are unable to or who have trouble taking the test. The mental and physical toll taken on students when it comes to the extreme high-stakes tests is often unnecessary and harmful. Let’s start by enumerating the reasons why we must take this test. It’s essentially a gatekeeper to higher education, otherwise known as college. That is virtually the sole reason many high schoolers across the U.S. are stressing themselves out both mentally and physically over these exams.  As you may know, some students might not choose to pursue college: maybe they have a call towards a job that doesn’t require a college degree, or they want to join the military, or maybe they want to become an influencer or other creative careers.  Either way, they shouldn’t be forced to take such a stressful test, and yet these tests are one of our school system’s main reasons for existence. 

 

          The statistics regarding brain function when big tests are constantly looming are well documented. According to Edutopia, cortisol, a chemical produced in the adrenal gland that’s also known as the “stress hormone,” has been known to spike by an average of 15%. This sudden increase can drop SAT scores as much as 80 points, and occasionally, from students who already face problems like poverty or violence in their daily lives, cortisol levels have been known to spike by an astronomical 35%, severely derailing cognitive processes and distort test scores beyond recognition. It’s important to acknowledge the fact that some people just aren’t great test takers. Take me for example. I must confess; I always overthink things, and it just makes my cortisol levels rise which as one can imagine truly shocked me when I received an exceptional score on my practice ACT. I speak from personal experience: these tests often disfavor those who aren’t test-taking extraordinaries. But it’s not just the students suffering, but the teachers as well. 

  

Challenges Faced by Teachers: 

          Most teachers I’ve spoken to say that their current job was their dream and that they genuinely care for their students. So, why do they seem so hateful towards their occupation at times? According to a 2024 Pew Research Center report, nearly 50% of teachers think their students and classes are doing fairly or poorly when it comes to academic performance. 50%, half of the nation is either decent or failing? This has a clear correlation with student behavior, with another 49% of teachers reporting that their students act terribly in class. What reason do they have to act so poorly? The system. The system is designed to get them in and out of the schools as soon as possible. And teachers are as much victims of this system as students are. It simply makes their duties even harder than they already are. Grading papers, watching students, keeping them engaged, its overwhelming even for the most strong-willed. The current educational model is emphasizing output—graduation rates, test scores—rather than student engagement and understanding. 

My mother is a kindergarten teacher, and I’ve seen firsthand the difficulty of her job, whether it’s battling disruptive behavior to dealing with administrative policies and low pay. It must be acknowledged that this issue needs to be addressed and resolved. We could start by making our education more entertaining and engaging, helping children learn at their own pace, and providing teachers with a higher salary. And now that we have some idea of what teachers go through, we can climb up the governmental ladder to decode the origins of this growing issue.  

 

Corruption, Bias, and Political Influence: 

          If there’s anything to know about US education, it's to understand the sheer amounts of corruption that seep into the cracks of this broken and dysfunctional system. Whether political or personal, it’s not doubtful that bias is everywhere, not only in education, but also in the world. According to the National Education Association, there are two prominent types of bias: implicit and explicit bias. Implicit bias is what affects our actions and understanding in a manner where we don’t realize it affects us. Explicit bias is the conscious, deliberate aversion or preference to something, usually people. This resembles what I call personal bias, or natural bias. This is what is instilled in children at a young age due to a certain system filled with political bias, or artificial bias. The bias we’re analyzing specifically derives straight from politicians. According to the Transparency International Knowledge Hub, corruption undermines the quality and availability of education and distorts the already accessible parts of it. It also destroys the trust of the public, leading to higher dropout rates and lower enrollment rates than ever before.  

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          Let’s take Florida as an example. Florida had a recent purge from their school libraries, taking books, that Gov. Ron DeSantis thought was too “sexually explicit.” According to Central Florida Public Media, the DOE spearheaded the removal of a wide of genre of works ranging from George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” and “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, to more liberal reads like “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” by George M. Johnson and “Gender Queer,” by Maia Kobabe. Now, when looking at it from an age-appropriate perspective, this becomes a real concern. Yes, kindergarteners shouldn’t be reading “Game of Thrones,” but when looking at it from a political perspective, it can be argued that the Florida government is just getting rid of these books to enforce a political agenda. This is unfair for the children in many ways, but the core reasoning is the inability of the children to form their own opinions. These children will potentially grow up being told that their feelings, thoughts, and opinions are wrong in the eyes of the government.  

 

Conclusion: 

          Ultimately, the issues we face in American education are complex and deeply rooted. But after reading this, I do encourage you to do your own research on these topics, like funding schools and how it’s linked to test scores. We explored the historical foundations of the system, the mental and emotional toll it takes on both students and teachers, and the ways in which bias and corruption continue to hinder effective and quality progress towards a meaningful education system. Most importantly, I encourage everyone to read this that if there is any doubt, don’t be afraid to google things and conduct your own research, because understanding these issues is the first step toward change.