Death and Life of the Great American School System - Book Report/Review Example

Death and Life of the Great American School System Introduction One of the education experts in America, Diane Ravitch wrote a book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. This was an ardent request to protect, keep, and rebuild the public education. This article has shown the means to giving an opportunity students to have a good learning environment. John Dewey has provided a framework using an aesthetic theory how this can be achieved. Ravitch has integrated these ideas in his writing to show how art as an experience can bring about this renewal. Dewey has written about several themes that a teacher can apply to revive the public education in America. Some of these themes are; imagination, perceptivity, experience, engagement, risk taking, active sensory, and connections. All these are themes to bring in engaged learning in the education. In addition to this, they provide learning experiences that increase the understanding of knowledge, remembering what they have learnt, and they become more inventive Diane Ravitch was an assistant secretary to education. She was mainly in the section of crating curriculum and she advocated for the renewal of the public education. With over four decades experience and research, she is against the restructuring of education today. That is, she does not agree with privatization of the education sectors, useless increase of specialized schools. In the her book, she has put it clearly using examples form the main cities such as Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and many more why this method cannot be a platform to improvement in public education. She is of concern that the public education in America is in danger. She has given good directions to clear the mess in all public schools in America. Ravitch’s experience the school accountability, the way they test, the way people chose the school which many people educational systems recommend is not good at all and it fails the intellect of the students. Politicians or businessmen cannot make good decisions about education. Instead, this should be the work of educationists. A good curriculum can help rolling out all the learning that should take place in public schools. All the charter schools must be absorbing all the needy kids not every kid. For the teachers to work hard and passionately their swages should be fair. According to her all the family members should work together from the elementary stages in education. The book is not just an analysis of the American education system. But it has all the content that the education stake holders should learn in for the American education system to be in order. Usually, students in charter schools perform better than students in public schools. This is because they select many students with without special needs, and they also select those with good discipline. This is where according to Dewey (140), parenting comes in. parenting is considered as a burden, the relationship that the student have at home is much reflected in their performance at school. From birth, the parent should be responsible and teach the child good discipline. The student then goes to school to learn shake spear and algebra, which are equally important. The choice of the school depends on the parent during the early stages of learning. This may affect the performance of the student. This may increase or degrade the learning morale of the student. As in discipline, parent should be fully responsible on the choice of the school that his or her child is going. No Child Left Behind legislation which was an establishment of the former US President George W Bush. Through this legislation, Ravitch shows that it is not in order to grade the accountability using the scores that a child has got in the exam. According to her, you cannot measure the success of the student using the marks that he or she got in an exam. This will on the other hand make a bad name for the schools that perform below par. In what she said that, the current curriculum rewards the teachers to who teaches how to pass exams. This should not be the case, because success does not only entail passing exams. It involves all round man. All the high profile people representing education has in one way or another, rubbed against The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Through numerous studies that she has carried out, she says that teaching Americans in their rural area s may not improve in the near future. She says that, rich people and organizations such as Broad foundations, Gates, and Walton have taken education into their own hands and progress towards the wrong direction. Education should have the aspect of happiness in life. This is because people always would want to happiness in their life. It should be in a list of the objectives and aims (Dewey 78). According to Orwell, you cannot have happiness by going directly to it. You will always have happiness when you do actions that promote happiness. In the contemporary curriculum, most of the areas that it dwells in are passing exams. In the aims there should be having aims and objectives the promote happiness. When a student starts from home while happy, this happiness extends to school. This in turn gives him or her ability socializes with others and they will be happy. Their mind will be ready to learn and make friends, hence their performance. This will have positive change. According to Dewey (126), the contemporary education policy makers are known to promote globalization. They are creating the curriculum that that will produce the best or at par with the world standards. Students are required to come out of school competent economically so that America becomes the global leader in economy. This curriculum does not teach how to love their place but it teaches how to surpass all the other countries globally. Normally human beings associate their home with certain communities or geographical areas than they associate it with the house. Some may feel fresh air and protected when their homes are surrounded by trees. Some may feel beauty when their homes are facing the beach. Some like walking in streets which have planted trees on both sides. Therefore the curriculum should help the student to love their place. This will produce people that will be able to develop their place (Clark 69). Home making is the most important responsibility of any man (Dewey 95). The home that any child is coming from builds the success of the child. Home making should be in the curriculum. This will help them make good homes after school. After making good homes, they will be able to become good parents. To gauge the success of the student using the marks that he or scored in an exam, degrade the morale of the students. Curriculum should include parenting, because the students are coming out of school to become parents. Some may be good in parenting and others may be good in academics. Curriculum is badly inclined into the idea that students should only study the economics. If the curriculum is balanced then students will be able to do well in school and in future they will start success from home. If they start with good parents, they will succeed in school. Conclusion According to her book, the best way to uplift the standards of education in America is to liberate curriculum from the hands of culture wars. Another way is to standardize the content of the curriculum in the whole nation. The working conditions of the teachers should be improved, their wages should increase (Robinson 89). Works Cited Clark, Charles S. Education Standards. Washington, D.C: CQ Press, 2011. Internet resource. Dewey, John. The School and Society. Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press, 1915. Print. Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books, 2010. Print. Robinson, Viane. Student-centered Leadership. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass, 2013. Internet resource. Read More