Reflection 18

Education has always been seen as a way to improve society as a whole. This is true primarily because educators can change the way a person thinks in the way that they teach. When the Russian’s went into space before America, the way that information in the schools were taught was ultimately changed in order to spark intelligence and encourage excelling in mathematics and the sciences. The defeat of being beaten into space caused the politicians of the United States to ignite the fire for students to want to learn. They learned because of defeat. This example is a great one to the effect that education is used to improve society because these politicians believed that by producing more intellectuals they wouldn’t be far behind amongst the other countries in making other discoveries and in going into outer space. In reference to the question I believe that education was once viewed as a means for improving society. This may have been the case in previous years of the history of education. Education was an improvement to society when it wasn’t granted freely to all. I also believe that education was used as a vehicle to improve society when Americans were beaten into space. In modern education, I believe that education can be used to improve society but unfortunately it isn’t utilized to the best of its capabilities. Education doesn’t have to be focused only on the renowned subject matter (reading, science, and math) but there are certain life skills that, if taught in modern schools, maybe we could revert to the times when education was seen as the vehicle that is currently needed to improve society. Curriculum in present day schools seem to be solely based on testing rather than what is actually learned from a particular subject. For instance the state tests seem to categorize students into who’s smart and who’s not. Not all students have the same levels of knowledge on certain subjects. I feel that if we weren’t so focused on drilling the students with the “state test” way of learning then maybe we could develop more of those indirect skills that are learned in a school.


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