American education system
| Subject: | 🎓 Education |
| Type: | Exploratory Essay |
| Pages: | 4 |
| Word count: | 1054 |
| Topics: | Teaching Philosophy, Community, High School, Social Psychology, 🗽 American Culture |
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Lack of respect for the teaching profession is a common problem experienced in various nations across the globe. The teaching profession in the United States has been disrespected through disregarding and discriminating teachers. Research indicates that in America, the assessment of teachers’ effectiveness is not carried out as it is done in other professions (Mulkeen 49). This fails to display the importance of teachers in the society, thus, affecting their identity. Another way through which teachers have been disrespected in the nation is through low wages and salaries. In a social perspective, the amount of salary rewarded in various professions determines the importance of the profession. Highly rewarded professionals are more respected than the professionals receiving low rewards are. The significance of these acts of disrespect to the teaching profession makes influential impacts to the entire education system. Failing to respect teachers leads to poor delivery within the profession. Disrespected teachers are demotivated to deliver great quality, and this affects the performance of the American education system. Therefore, as this essay argues, lack of respect for the teaching profession is the core problem with the education system in America.
How the Teaching Profession is Disrespected in America
One of the prime ways through which disrespect has been experienced in the American society is low wages. American teachers experience many hardships with less salary to enjoy at the end of the month. Firstly, for one to qualify as an American teacher, they must go through all the levels of education in the state. The must achieve grades that above average in both the lower and higher education levels. This depicts the struggle that teachers are subjected to through their training courses only to end up with a profession with low wages. Secondly, the teaching profession involves great risks. Teachers are posted in regions where the security is low because of factors such as the presence of terrorists. Research indicates that very few American schools run under the surveillance of security officers to ensure that the environment is safe (Blumenstyk 22). Therefore, in many cases, teachers operate under the risk of deadly attacks. This makes the career too risky to be rewarded low wages. Hence, the government and private sectors have dishonored the teaching profession in the United States through offering low wages to teachers. The social impact of this to the public is stimulated disrespect for teachers and the teaching profession. Members of the society view teachers as poor citizens in a discriminative career, as they do a lot of work with low wages to enjoy. For this reason, few people in the state would want to join the teaching profession. Therefore, the prevalence of disrespect towards teachers in the United States is evidenced by rewarding the teachers poorly for their duties.
The Impact of Disrespecting Teachers in the American Education System
The reason I find disrespecting the teaching profession as a chronic problem affecting the American education system is that it has significant impacts concerning the quality of education provided to students by teachers. Through factors of disrespect such as low wages, the teachers recruited in the American education system are discouraged while offering quality education to their students. The roles of a teacher include ensuring that the students comprehend the academic concepts learned in class. This requires proper attendance to the students and an investment of time, energy and resources to ensure that they all understand despite their different levels of intelligence. However, when a teacher is poorly rewarded, they feel demotivated to invest their energy and time in the teaching profession. The fact that they want to beat their basic needs that might not be met by the little amount of salary earned from the teaching profession may cause them to look out for activities to earn them more money during their part time (Farber 72). This leads to the creation of a gap between teachers and the students, as their time will be divided between students and other activities. This is contrary to what is required of them, as they should invest all their time in making students understand. It is also an inevitable fact that a demotivated teacher will not be effective in employing their teaching skills to reach out to students. Therefore, disrespecting teachers through minimal payments reduces the quality of education offered by the American education system.
Secondly, the American education system is affected by the lack of respect for the teaching profession through the shortage of personnel to deliver quality education. When members of the society develop a mental perception that the teaching career is not an effective way of meeting their daily needs, few people want to train as teachers. When the time to select their courses arrives, many American students rush to pursue the respected courses in the nation. This leads to a reduction of the population of training institutions that offer teaching skills. When only a small portion of citizens trains to be teachers, the number of teachers in the future will reduce, leading to the lack of sufficient trained personnel in classrooms. Since the prevalence of this problem in the academic system, the quality of education offered by the American education system decreased (Ravitch 130). Only a handful of teachers is expected to deliver to large populations of students in classrooms, leading to overworking of the available teachers. Overworked teachers with reduced salaries are overpowered by the demand of students in classrooms leading to poor delivery of education. In such schools, the poor performance of students leads to degradation of the nation’s education system. Therefore, disrespect for teachers in the United States affects the education system through the insufficiency of trained personnel.
Conclusion
As this essay argues, lack of respect for the teaching profession is the core problem with the education system in America. This has occurred through the reduction of quality delivered by teachers in American schools. Disrespecting teachers by offering them low wages of salaries with intense teaching tasks and risks has caused demotivation within the teaching stuff. This leads to poor delivery of their services to students. Additionally, this level of disrespect has offered led to discouraging members of the society from applying for teaching courses. This leads to a reduction of trained personnel within the education sector, sequentially causing poor quality of services offered by teachers in crowded classrooms.
- Blumenstyk, Goldie. American Higher Education in Crisis? What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press2015. Print.
- Farber, Katy. Why Great Teachers Quit: And how we Might Stop the Exodus. New York: Skyhorse Publishing 2015.
- Mulkeen, Aidan. Recruiting, Retaining, and Retraining Secondary School Teachers and Principals in Sub-Saharan Africa.Washington: World Bank, Africa Region, Human Development Dept, 2007. Print.
- Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books 2016. Print.
