Current Events and Education

Learning and knowledge are highly prized in all societies, especially in the United States, where there is a strong perception that educated people will be able to have access to more opportunities and a better life status. It has been discussed and studied that the choices people made while attending high school, especially whether to pursue higher education or not, are likely to have a lasting effect on their life style.
According to DiNitto   (2011), education policies have been, since after the 1950’s, a point of battle for some politicians or a point of engagement for others, supposedly trying to provide the best policies and reforms in education for children and the future of the country. Some of these attempts have been almost hurtful to our country, like the famous NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND (NCLB)program where education is just measured by performance on a proficiency test.   NCLB does not really look at the students or teachers as a whole person, but only measures them without taking into consideration other aspects that could be affecting their performance at school. In some instances, this jeopardizes their future after being labeled as a person that scored under their proficiency level. This can be true for either the student or the teacher.
Based on the New York Times article written by C.M. Blow (2012), countries like China and India are investing in education for future workers instead of continuing to just punish teachers for the low scoring of their students unlike in the United States.   Blow referred to the last report from the Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation comparing United States, Chinese and Indian investments for future generations and found the results are quite scary:
Half of children in the United States get no early childhood education and we have no national strategy to increase enrollment. More than a quarter of children have a chronic health condition, such as obesity or asthma, threatening their...