The Necessity of Education Reform

One of the main problems that our country will face in the future is coping with the wide education gap we have allowed to form between ourselves and other top nations in the world. In a world where a nation’s power is based almost exclusively on its level of technological advancement, a decreased focus on teaching the maths and sciences could have disastrous results. Only through reform can we hope to regain our status as the top country in education.

Thanks to President John F. Kennedy’s education reforms in the early sixties that placed a heavy influence on education in the fields of math and science, the United States was able to take the lead in the space race and become the first nation to land a man on the moon. The only problem with this is that we seem to have become sated, and progress in many areas has slowed since then.

The majority of college graduates today are receiving degrees in business or law, both service industry professions. The maths and sciences, however, have seen a steady decline in the number of students choosing to devote their time to a degree in that field. This has lead to a drastic increase in the average age of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians, meaning that as more retire every year there is progressively less to fill their places.

Nations such as China and India, on the other hand, are witnessing a surplus of young engineers and scientists, allowing them to develop more and more of the new technology crucial to our modern world. The United States still can claim the majority of new patents every year, but this majority is constantly shrinking, and will eventually cease to be a majority should the current trend continue.

The only hope we have of retaining our spot as the world’s center of technological innovation hinges on education reform beginning at the lowest level. Good teachers should be rewarded, bad teachers given additional training, and the math and science curriculums should be retooled to make them more appealing to young students.

I know it is much more difficult to accomplish these things than it is to say them, and I don’t profess to have all, or for that matter, any, of the answers. I am simply pointing out the necessity of education reform. It seems to always get pushed to the rear when more “important” political matters come up, and I believe this is a drastic oversight. Only with increased public awareness can we all come together and accomplish meaningful educational reform.


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