I have decided to do my research on the Educational System in the United States. It seems that we have fell off the map in the rankings(as we have in many other aspects of life) in education. But I have also decided that with every question that I present I hope to have a solution to accompany the problem. I also want to take a hands on approach and see what people of my generation think of education. Is it something that is done because it needs to be or are people actually excited about the perks that learning gives. Maybe the systems aren't working anymore because the people don't appreciate what it has to offer. This topic stands out because of the question that the preview staffer proposed about what happened to the peace-loving yet rebellious students that wanted nothing more than dual rights and a good education. It amazes me at the numbers of students that drop out or don't further their education, especially within the African American community. With all that our ancestors have done to afford us these rights we don't even use them. In my neighborhood we have a saying "Rosa Parks went to jail just for us and ya'll still sitting in the back." it's like we have the opportunity we just don't take them. Why not? How have things changed since our parents were in school? Grandparents? Is it a cultural thing within America? There are 3 main questions that arise when I think of this research:
1) What is the Educational System about(government aspects)
2) what makes American values of education different from other countries(government and cultural)
3) is there a cultural difference within America that causes a problem for education.
One source that I find extremely intriguing is an article from Huffington Post titled "Education in America: Our Broken Escalator." This article talks about what is actually happening to the education "tools"--as I like to call them and how all we're doing is cutting the tools that we need in order to succeed. For instance education budget cuts. This article acknowledges that there is something wrong with te education system and I hope to use this source as a way to find the problems within the system. Another article from ABC News entitled Stupid America. With this article I hope to find possible solution as to what can be done about the failing education system here. My last source I'd like to use would be the UF population. It has a huge amount of culturally different people who have different backgrounds. And the people are part of the generation in question. It helps to get first hand experiences when trying to answer/solve questions that relate to reality math not included.
"Education in America: Our Broken Escalator"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opinion/sunday/17kristof.html?_r=1
"Stupid America"
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=1500338
Ashley,
ReplyDeleteI like this topic for obvious reasons. However, we need to narrow it. For one, you need to decide what "stage" of education you are talking about. If you are speaking about college education, then you can use the UF population. But if you are talking about high school ("secondary education") you could even use your school back home.
I think this comment points us in the right direction:
"It amazes me at the numbers of students that drop out or don't further their education, especially within the African American community. With all that our ancestors have done to afford us these rights we don't even use them. In my neighborhood we have a saying "Rosa Parks went to jail just for us and ya'll still sitting in the back." it's like we have the opportunity we just don't take them."
In order to narrow your topic, I suggest you focus on the African American community and their attitudes towards education as well as how the educational system (either on the high school, college, or perhaps even primary level) discriminates against them either through content, segregation, all sorts of things.
There are some great books about secondary education reform by Jonathan Kozol, who argues that one of the issues is funding. See the book, "Savage Inequalities":
http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Inequalities-Children-Americas-Schools/dp/0060974990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317496338&sr=8-1
(we probably have it in our Education library)
If this is not where you want to take your topic, I understand, but we need to narrow the topic. You could even talk specifically about the education system in Florida--this would allow you to do some primary research into real schools and students' attitudes as well as the background theoretical work.
As far as the assignment of the prospectus goes, you give two interesting sources, but neither are scholarly (that is, neither shows up on google scholar). You may be able to use these sources, but you want to find some more detailed sources.