The Declining Grade School System, children are recieving less education

p Why Our Grade Schools Fail

I : Introduction

Over the course of the last twenty years we have seen a great decline in our public education system . Grade schools are failing to educate our children in the basics of reading , writing , arithmetic , and science instead choosing to concentrate on the development of social skills , and multi-cultural education . These children often end up functionally illiterate and are still allowed to continue on to the high school and college levels . If we are to continue maintaining the high education standards that this nation

has become known for over the last 100 years we much do something in to resolve this problem . Our schools have neglected students through failure to properly train teachers , failure to provide a comprehensive and age appropriate curricula , and the lack of involvement from parents in dealing with aspects of education such as social skills and manners in the home prior to the student starting kindergarten

II : Discussion

According to a White House report (2007 ) one of the major issues that concerns parents when asked about their children 's education is the quality of the teachers in the grade school classrooms . Teachers are often poorly prepared and find that the limited time they spend in the classroom prepares them for educating children in the 21st century They often find themselves in a parental role when many of them are just barely out of adolescence because of a parental failure to teach their child basic social skills and manners . According to the White House (2007 ) many teachers also suffer from a lack of supervision or mentorship once they have entered the classroom as a fully-fledged teacher

Another issues surrounding teacher training surround subject knowledge Many teachers enter the school system with little knowledge of the subjects they will be expected to teach . According to the White House (2007 ) only 35 out of 40 states currently require teachers to take an exam that evaluates their competence to teach in grade appropriate subject areas . Lack of knowledge about subjects one expected to teach is detrimental to students because even if a teacher can teach from the teacher 's edition of the textbook , they may not be able to answer question asked by the students if they are not in the book

According to Innerst (1999 ) one of the main problems has been that teachers are trained in teaching methods rather than teaching subjects The major issue during the grade school years is that children need to learn the 3 R 's (reading , writing , arithmetic , and this is what they are not getting . They are learning how to sit in a circle , and be polite to each other but these are skills that they have plenty of time to learn . The window for teaching a student mathematical and language skills that will follow them the rest of their lives only lasts a few short years , and teachers who focus on multiculturalism and social skills miss out on this window of opportunity

Another area...