A letter to President Obama on problems facing American education system

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

June 26, 2014

Honorable President Obama:

Mr. President, in the past I have written to you about policies (or the lack of them) mostly concerning the Kurds.  This time, I am writing to you as an American academician whose field is Education and that also is my subject.  As a former high school teacher and current university professor I just wanted to share three major points with you. 

1. On the positive side of things, we are not doing as badly as mainstream news media portrays it.  Looking back a few decades we see that our public schools have been doing better, especially with regard to drop out rates. If people simply listened to the news media, they would believe that America has a huge problem with dropouts. According to Diane Ravitch in her 2010 book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education” these claims that our high school dropout rate is tremendous are not valid.

Ravitch argues that high school dropout rates have declined significantly since 1972 among white and African American students.  In 1972, the dropout rate among whites was 12%, but by 2009, the rate had declined to 5%.  Similarly, the African American dropout rate was 21% in 1972, but by 2009, it had shrunk to 9%.  The concepts are still relevant today as the dropout rate has continued to trend downward to approximately 7 percent for all students in 2012, according to the US Department of Education statistics. Nonetheless, it is still important that we continue to decrease the drop out rates because in one way or another it could minimize the number of incarcerated youth. 

However, we will continue to have a problem with dropout rates unless we do something about poverty rates among families with children.  We live in the world's wealthiest nation. Yet 14.5 percent of U.S. households—nearly 49 million Americans, (and this figure includes 15.9 million children)—struggle to put food on the table. In the United States, hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food, but rather the continued prevalence of poverty. The range of solutions, I am sure, are well known to you – from income redistribution, to more jobs for poorer families, retraining, support for parents who are the working poor, school lunch vouchers, etc.

The question is, Mr. President, how can we claim that we educate all American children when so many children live in poverty?  This is a vexing question since children can hardly learn when they are not well fed, or nurtured or live in a family that is in economic crisis from day to day.  I believe this is a fair question to ask since we are the richest nation in the world.  Our concern is about the American future.  If poverty levels continue to grow, it becomes a huge drain on the nation’s economy because a segment of the population is not able to contribute to the economy and the children of these families continue to suffer with little hope to find a way out of poverty and look forward to the future.   

2. Mr. President, we are one of the leading democratic nations in the world, but we are the nation with the highest poverty rate amongst the industrial nations, and we have the highest incarceration rate.  While we have more resources than many other industrial nations, yet these other nations have superior education rates, literacy rates, math and science competency, and less incarceration of their citizens.  The only reason for this disparity is the disparity between our socio economic system and theirs.  In their socio economic system, families are well nurtured and supported.

Some might argue that they pay higher tax rates, however, when we combine all the taxes we pay at the federal, state, and local levels with sales taxes etc., we may pay as high a tax rate as they do. However, with the taxes they pay, there are no one who is not insured with health care, citizens have a roof over their heads, and every household has food on their table, and in return, parents have more time to pay attention to their children’s education. 

Apparently, they have allocated their tax money and other resources better to meet the needs of their societies. And one of the most important factors is that they don’t wage as many wars as we do. Mr. President, occasionally, we go thousand of miles away from our shores to other parts of the world to kill or be killed. We have money for these kinds of bloody missions in which we know we liquidate lives, but when it comes to improving our nation’s education system, which would help secure America’s future, we claim that we don’t have the money. Well, in the last two wars, we spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of precious lives of our nation’s sons and daughters. I think, it is a legitimate question that we, as a nation, ask ourselves, where our national priorities are?

3. To this end, the teaching preparation curriculum program should be revised because with the new technology and advancement of science we need to look at how some of these subjects should be integrated into the curriculum.  Specifically, we should examine the new science of how the human brain functions and learns in educational settings.  This is currently not a routine part of teacher training curricula.  This is vitally important and central to teaching and learning effectiveness because learning how the brain learns allows educators, particularly the classroom teacher, to come up with different ways to encourage learning based on this understanding.  The concept of brain-based learning includes the concept of “multiple intelligences” and Visual/Auditory/Kinesthetic (VAK) learners. Understanding this can help teachers to develop techniques to address these varying learning styles and ultimately should help to address the problem of school drop outs – which may in part be based on the fact that some students cannot learn effectively in traditional classroom environments.   Learning styles is not just a problem for academically challenged students – but also can be for gifted students who are frustrated by traditional classroom learning.  We want to develop these brightest as our future leaders and thinkers in different areas, therefore it is critical that we meet their learning style needs.

Finally, it is crucial to the American future that we prioritize our domestic national needs.  To that end, we should re-funnel the money spent on wars and instead devote these dollars to more effectively educate and train our citizens.  Because victory in wars will not preserve the prosperity of America in the future, but educating our children more effectively, making sure they are well fed and nurtured, could guarantee America’s prosperity for decades to come.

Sincerely your,

Kirmanj Gundi
Professor
Tennessee State University