The Standards We Should Have for Our Schools

            A woman sits with her child in a gymnasium with 200 other parents, each one of them has a little slip of paper with a number on it. In front of them stands a man with a bingo cage and a microphone. The cage releases a ball, the man calls out a number, and like the snap of the fingers,  a child’s hopes of a better education just fell through. Each of these parents has entered their child into the lottery to hope for a better education and a better future for their beloved son or daughter. Although a couple dozen spots are available in this prestigious school, these parents decide to take the chance to hopefully see their child succeed in life.

            The film “Waiting for Superman” talks about this real life situation, where parents go against slim odds to hopefully get their child into a good school. These children usually come from very poor areas which have very poor schools. But people have started building charter schools, these public schools have great teachers, an excellent learning environment and a no excuses policy that demands the highest from every student. The only problem with these schools is that everyone wants in, but few spots are available, so children are put into a drawing to be chosen for these schools.

            It is ridiculous for any school to be less than the charter schools. Every child deserves a good education regardless of what neighborhood they live in. We should not have to find great teachers because all teachers should be great. Our teachers are what is building the future of our children, and we should demand the absolute best from every single one of them. We need higher standards for teachers so our children only get the absolute best out of their education.

Prison: The Greatest Classroom in the World

Are basic education skills learned better in a classroom or a prison cell? In “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, the author describes his own experiences in education and teaching himself more than he ever learned in a classroom. Although Malcolm X was called the most articulate hustler on the streets, the reality was that he was functionally illiterate. He noticed his own illiteracy when he went to prison and wanted to write to his idol, Elijah Muhammad, but he was embarrassed of his use of slang and his incomprehension of larger words. He immediately started reading all the books he could get his hands on, he started reading the dictionary and then he read everything he could in the prison library.

I personally love this story. It is a great story about how one man did not like something about himself and went out to change it. I could not imagine how hard it would be to teach oneself something as crucial as how to read, but he did it anyway. Most people in the United States learned how to read in large groups in the classic classroom setting, and even some of those children that learned how to read grow up to be illiterate adults. What would our world look like if everyone had this desire to be fully literate? How would our schools look? Our world could be a much better place if everyone pushed themselves for an education to be better than what they were yesterday.