Education
Declining Education in America
There are many factors that show why American education has declined. American school systems have faced hardships, both social and economic. The lack of competition and difference in curriculum has revealed the distinction between education principles among different countries. One of the reasons why basics are not learned is that they are no longer being taught at the same level as before. In an effort to make textbooks easier to understand, the manufactures of these books have made the information in them less useful as a teaching tool. For example, when a well-known history book was revised with a target aimed at the high school market, words like "spectacle" and "admired" were eliminated because they were found to be too difficult (Sowell, 1993; 7). In the earlier years of the twentieth century, students finishing the eighth grade in Kansas had to pass an examination which included spelling such words as "elucidation" and "animosity," defining such terms as "zenith" and "panegyric," as well as diagramming sentences and doing very advanced arithmetic problems (Sowell, 1993; 7). Now, the majority of the high school graduates could not spell or define some of the words that an eighth grade student was required to know in order to be promoted into high school.
The U.S. National Center for Educational Statistics has proven that America has set lower standards than other countries in thestandards that are instilled in their students. In 1972, 116,000 students scored above 600 on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and less than 71,000 scored that high ten years later even though there was an increase in population (Sowell, 1993; 9). Even with the population increase between the 1970's and present day, there has been a dramatic decrease in SAT scores (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004; 162). People sometimes try to blame the lower test results on an increase in the amount of students that...
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