The very bottom line, IMHO, for the American education system is it no longer meets the needs of the students; it does, however, meet very well the needs of the teachers at all levels.
In 2010 there was a critically acclaimed movie “Waiting for Superman” that took a real hard look at what the American education system has become - it wasn’t a very pretty picture. One of the many things that caught my attention was the changes to the American society that our education system ignores.
The education system is based on America immediately following World War II. Since then how many industrial jobs, heavy and light, have gone overseas? That was where a bulk of our high school graduates were headed. Those in the middle were headed for mid-level management jobs. Guess where they went when the manufacturing jobs moved overseas? The upper 10-15% were college bound destined to be upper management and inventors developing new industries and the jobs to go with them. We have all heard politicians of various strips talk about the loss of jobs overseas but no one understood the impact.
So, what was the education system’s solution? Well, since al of the educators graduated college and got reasonable jobs the obvious solution was everyone goes to college. I will not address the impact that has had because there isn’t enough room to list even the basic impacts.
Where are we going with this? I can easily foresee menial jobs requiring a Masters Degree because the educators say so.
I have a master’s degree and I can’t get a job as a clerk in a pharmacy. No one will hire me. I could get a million jobs teaching ABA to kids with autism but I can only work when my kids are at school and those jobs are all after school and weekends. I’m feeling a bit sour about degrees altogether these days.