Higher education is the ultimate key to success in today’s information based economy. The level of education that an American obtains today is an important indicator of how well he or she will do in the workplace. Why is it, then, that everyday we hear more and more about how the current state of education continues to get worse and worse?
Despite the mountains of money allocated to schools every year, our students continue to achieve less and perform dismally. Even when we implement broad national legislation to raise standards, our pool of students and professionals in the sciences continues to diminish. Although funding cries have been made America’s favorite scapegoat, which in some areas is a real problem, there are several other factors that need to be discussed in the debate over public education in the United States.
Paramount among these issues is one that receives little consideration in the offices of decision makers and is fundamental towards understanding what is wrong with our schools and how we should address these overwhelming deficiencies. In today’s educational world, students have opportunities beyond those of any generation that has come before them, yet they continue to fail at taking advantage of them. This is because our generation is consumed by a culture of complacence.
Never before has it been so easy for students to get what they want with minimal effort. The school system has assured us that if they can make it through 12 years of state mandated babysitting, we can make the minimum wage and build the American dream. The problem that this presents, however, is that across the globe, in countries like India and China, the impoverished youth of the destitute are throwing themselves into their books, grabbing at every scrap of opportunity that they can get and beating us in our number one trademark: ambition.
Our generation is known as “the boomerang generation” because we know that if the going gets tough, we can swing on back to mom and dad’s for a couple of months or even years to get back on our feet. The urgency of success does not exist in our life plans. The “I’ll do it tomorrow” mentality prevails.
As a nation, we continue to berate our representatives and government for falling short of expectations, when in reality we must look to ourselves, and the lifestyles we demand, to find solutions. The greater world does not know or care about our designer coffees and super fast fashion trends. The greater world demands tenacity and competence, values that in American education and youth culture continue to bleed into the background.
More than funding, more than diversity, more than standards, we as Americans and citizens of the world must re-learn the culture of education and the value of knowledge. If we continue to allow our expectations and our ingenuity to slip, it will not matter how well funded schools are or how many tests we give our children. We must reinvigorate the idea that education is not just a requirement for inclusion, but the requirement for success not only in this country, but in the world.
Until Americans can overcome this culture of complacence, we cannot expect our educational system to produce the strong, flexible, and ingenious individuals that we desperately need to maintain our dominance in all parts of the global community.
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