What’s Really Wrong with the Kids Today?

By: Beth Pelleteri
Posted In: Opinion

What’s wrong with the kids today? How many times have you heard that question being asked when you see kids getting into trouble? Most of the time people say the solution is to get them into school and educate them. What if, however, the school was the problem? Many people are now questioning why their public schools are failing them and why is it such a problem for the government to fix it.

While many people are looking at the economy as one of the worst problems in the United States right now, the failing public education system is not far behind. Unlike the economy, the answer that many experts are now saying is not the old adage, “If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved,” said Jay Greene, author of “Education Myths,” to “20/20” host John Stossel, during a program called “Stupid in America.” “We’ve doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren’t better.” Statistics show that even though we are now spending nearly double what we used to in the 1970s, graduation rates are flat.

Many parents and even some educators are tired of the way the educational system is failing and needs drastic improvements. “Today, the level of dissatisfaction and even outright anger at the educational system is tremendously high,” said Roger Schank, head of Engines for Education, a part of the Institute for the Learning Sciences that deals with trying to change the way kids are taught at public schools. “We hear a great deal about the failure of our schools, about falling test scores, and about inequalities in education.”

Many of the problems in the educational system stem from the inferior quality of teaching that is seen in schools. While some schools that run off very little money use other means to get their students to want to learn, bigger schools, who get millions of dollars in aid, fail to have kids read at even two grades below the level they should be at. Another problem comes from the teachers themselves. If you want to fire a teacher because they are just incompetent to teach at the level they are at, it takes so long to go through what the teacher’s union have you go through, most principals put up with it. It took nearly six years of litigation to fire a teacher for sending sexually orientated e-mails to a student, and they had to pay him the salary all those years because it was in the contract.

One of the main ways that parents and educators are trying to improve education is through a system of vouchers that would help the students get into betters schools, when ordinarily they would not have the money. So instead of the money being sent from the government to the school, it is attached to the student, letting them choose where they want to go and the money will follow. In this manner, students and their families would be able to choose the school they want to go to, instead of which ever one they are zoned into. This is the way that many Western European schools work, where if the school is not educating then the students will leave with their money, resulting in the failing school to be closed down.

This shows in test scores; while U.S. students succeed in the early tests, by the time they reach high school their European counterparts score much higher. Even students in less developed countries are out scoring American high school students. This is why European schools always change up how they teach because, as one Belgium Principal Kaat Vandensavel said to 20/20, “If we don’t offer them what they want for their child, they won’t come to our school.”

The only place that has a voucher system in place is in Washington, D.C., where students from poor families can qualify to get them. The closest a voucher system had gotten state wide was in South Carolina, where new Governor Mark Sanford brought a bill to grant families a choice in their children’s education with vouchers and state taxes towards schools. While many people praised the bill; school boards, teachers unions, and politicians all rejected the bill, saying that the money would go from the public schools to the private and destroy the state’s educational system.

So what is the problem with the educational system? Is it lack of money to upgrade the schools? Is it too tough to get incompetent teachers out of schools? Is it that the kids just are not up to learning? Maybe it’s all of the above, but it needs to change and the sooner the better.