It’s no longer fun to go to kindergarten and get a two hour reading lecture. I remember when kindergarten was intended to culture friendships and social skills like sharing, as well as expand upon basic reading, math, etc. which should be taught in the home anyhow.
The NCLB Act really gets at me because there are students who have the physical incapability of learning due to being mentally handicapped as a result of a disease, birth defect, or horrible accident. Those people are being forced to take the same courses and achieve the same grades as the students who should be accelerated, but aren’t because of funding problems. I think it’s a large waste of money on people who won’t be helpful to society, the income tax the government collects on my money is supposed to benefit me in the long run by paying tuition for those who will help the world, to create roads and distribute public services like transport and garbage. Also there are students who don’t care, don’t wish to be there, or have different interests, and are not going to retain any of the information they are given. Those people are better off leaving school now and getting a head start in their life, and they are left with the incapability to do so without it being some criminal act. Teachers unions, students, and parents are all beginning to have concerns with the direction education reform is going. Any student with an interest is going to be well ahead of the school materials on the topics they enjoy which might include things like Math and Science, it did for me. It takes several years to perform research, to write, to publish, and to distribute a book. By the time a book has reached the classroom it is no less out of date than 3 years. Even if schools received the money to update material yearly it wouldn’t be enough. School has become daycare without entertainment.
I propose that school should be restricted to the “core classes” which are Mathematics, Science, Language, and History. Those are the abstract skills that are necessary for the comprehension of any other topic. You could extend class periods to full hours and give the teachers and students time to have one on one sessions to ensure the material is understood. And this frees up three hours of the day to complete homework or research/take a local class on a topic you’re interested in. Parents should take it as their duty to expose their children to the world and let them explore the things they are interested in.