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Haford Keh
ENGL-1301-0A
Dr. Miller
Nov. 20th 2020
Is the School System failing students?
School is the status quo for learning. It is seen by the majority of students as the best place to
learn, make connections and forge a balance between their social and academic lives. And in
most respects, it absolutely is. However, some statistics make it difficult to believe that our
current education system is working as well as it could. The Commission on Education predicts
that 385 million young people are at risk of not having the skills needed to fill jobs in 2030.
Perhaps we should admit that our schools do not respond as deftly as we would have expected to
the patterns of modern times. But now the big question becomes: “Is the School System failing
students?
We must go through a very brief history of human education before we can address the
question. Humans have existed as nomadic hunter-gatherers for 90% of our life. The dominant
mode of learning existed within families and tribes in those days. From those around us, we
learned to hunt and gather. An agricultural revolution occurred around 10,000 BC. This changed
the ways in which we lived drastically. Humans started to settle down and establish early
civilizations. Before the Industrial Revolution, agriculture was a huge part of our lives. This
agricultural era encompasses, as you might imagine, a broad period of time from around 10 000
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BC to around 1760 AD. We moved from mainly tribal learning to different kinds of
apprenticeships in this span of time. Here, an apprenticeship has a very large definition, such as
working under a master craftsman, a master of slaves, or becoming part of a guild. In turn,
learning began to move away from the family unit. Another dramatic shift in our education was
characterized by the next great development, the Industrial Revolution. It was during the
Industrial Age that schools were founded, as we know them, but how did it happen? At the time,
Horace Mann, the Secretary of Education for the State of Massachusetts, researched many
programs throughout Europe to find the one he thought would be the best for America. His
inference here? The Paradigm of Prussia. It was funded by taxation, it was compulsory to attend
and it had teachers specially qualified. But the thing is, many people do not realize that the
Prussians used their school system as a way for young students to instill loyalty to authority. In
