Although I'm not a teacher, and I will not be a teacher, our education system needs reform. I think more students should learn science and math, because that's how countries survive in a global economy. Not only that, but science and engineering jobs allow people to make a good enough living to provide for themselves and their families. I took a globalization class at Iowa State which had a ton of guest speakers from every end of the political spectrum. It included people like Newt Gingrich, Robert Reich and Thomas Friedman. No matter what there beliefs on welfare, war in Iraq, etc, they all agreed our education system is very important to our economy and needs to be improved. I read the below article this afternoon: http://www.cnn.com/2007/EDUCATION/02/22/math.reading.scores.ap/index.html
Below is the most disturbing thing I've read in a long time.
"
On the math test, about 60 percent of high school seniors performed at or above the basic level. At that level, a student should be able to convert a decimal to a fraction, for example.
Just one-fourth of 12th-graders were proficient or better in math, meaning they demonstrated solid academic performance. To qualify as "proficient," students might have to determine what type of graph should be used to display particular types of data."
Wow, I thought we learned how to do that stuff before high school. This needs fixed. I don't know how because I'm not an education expert, but I'm guessing it begins with paying teachers a livable income.
