Not only is there an education crisis in the United States, there’s a problem with today’s society and that problem is apathy. Parents send their children off to school in the morning and they come back in the evening. Some parents attend sports games or talk with the teachers every once in a while, but really, how does any of that mean you care? Kids no longer learn in school, they waste away fifteen or sixteen years of their life and come out with a fifth grade reading level or absolutely no idea who Napoleon was beyond the typical answer, “some French guy?†And this is all considered perfectly fine in today’s society because we have computers that do the thinking for us. We even have the internet that answers all the questions we may ever need answered, but what happens when you’re trying to figure out exactly how much gas you used between point A and B, or the change you’re counting back to somebody you just sold your car to because you can’t find a job with your high school diploma and you’re completely broke.
Gone are the days when regular public high school classes require three to four page reports of A Tale of Two Cities, or The Old Man and the Sea. Third-graders are not required to know by memory, the times-table up to twelve times twelve, and fourth-graders are no longer doing three-digit multiplication problems. I know from my own personal experience of high-school, that I could’ve graduated at the end of my sophomore year and been just as well off. I know it’s not the same for everybody or every school, and I do know that most schools offer advanced classes. The problem, however, is that even these advanced classes are not so advanced. There simply isn’t enough time in a ninety-minute class that, because of block scheduling, only get two or three classes per week, to teach truly ‘advanced’ English. It’s simply a tad bit harder than regular classes and taught by the heads of each department.