Education Papers: Education Essays, Term Papers on Education, Education Research Paper Help

Both Louis Menand’s “College: The End of the Golden Age” and Joe Quenan’s “ Matriculation Fixation” present us with many misconceptions that the ordinary public and those employed by our educational institutions struggle with. We are faced with many challenges within our institutions of higher education because of the many contradictions that they embody. We need to re-evaluate our goals and missions within our nations universities to produce graduates that will better help society as well as themselves.

Education, a word that can mean so many things. While in the past thirty years colleges and the expanse of knowledge that they offer have continued to evolve, oddly enough, the concept of a four year liberal arts education has remained relatively unchanged. The truth of the matter is that vast majority of students will have very different college experiences. Even though almost half of all Americans have attended college at some point in their lives, scholars in the field feel as though higher education is hopeless. The higher education system has been growing steadily since the 1970’s and with this significant increase in the number of students and ultimately graduates, the value of most degrees has been severely lessened. This, coupled with other outside influences has sent our education system into a state of depression. We need to reassess our reasons for pursuing higher education, and adjust our expectations of what a college degree can and cannot do. Read more…

Diversity versus Excellence
There is a growing movement in all walks of life across America to promote diversity. This movement is active in college admissions, the work force, military admittance, and many other walks of life. Throughout the country universities have been reserving admission spots and using quotas for diverse students as part of affirmative action. Less qualified foreign and minority students should always be required to compete directly with equally or higher qualified white students. In fact admission standards should be totally race and gender blind. Excellence should always take priority over diversity. Affirmative action should be removed from higher educational admission policies altogether. However, liberals appear to control the agenda with respect to affirmative action.

In May of 2003 the University of Michigan was sued by a group of white applicants who were denied admission to the University’s graduate school because they were white. The main focus behind this lawsuit was whether affirmative action should take place in college admission policies. The facts disclosed that less qualified applicants of diverse minorities with lower test scores were admitted at the expense of better-qualified white applicants. The University of Michigan did not deny the plaintiff’s claim and argued that diversity is an essential element of current American society. Read more…

The book of Exodus tells the story of the Israelites, who, losing hope as they waited for Moses to return from the mountaintop, began to worship for the golden calf (McDonald, 2002). For Americans, especially low-income Americans, this story provides an important context for one of our greatest challenges-the education of our children.

Too many low-income families have lived in communities where the public school system has been struggling for years. These families, unfortunately, have had no choice in deciding where to send their children for schooling. For a family of four in 2001, the national poverty level was at $17,650 (Caire, 2002). Many of them are at or below the level. What options do these families have when it come to their child’s education? Do they even have a choice?

Webster’s dictionary defines choices as selection, the right to choose. In a neighborhood of complete poverty and low achieving schools, most parents believe they don’t have the right to choose an education for their children. Many of them don’t realize that there may come a choice.

School choice is an up and coming movement. Broadly defined, it is any policy designed to break the link between the residential location and school attendance zones in order to reduce the geographic constraint inherent in traditional public schooling (Goldhaber & Eide, 2002). The choices can include magnet schools, open enrollment, and interdistrict choice programs. Charter school growth also represents a significant expansion of choice for the public (Goldhaber & Eide, 2002). Even still, the conversations about choice are evolving. Parents can now try to get school vouchers to help them choose the academic paths their children may go.

The concept of school vouchers was proposed 50 years ago by an economist, Milton Friedman (Viteritti, 2002). Friedman was condemning the public education system in the United States (Viteritti, 2002). With parents being given the option to choose, failing public schools would be forced to close. Friedman predicted that better run private schools would replace schools in a marketplace that would have little or no tolerance for academic failure (Viteritti, 2002). Read more…

I have an 18 year old cousin. One day last year we were talking about sex and sex education.She said,” They really need to have sex education in school because kids need to know that it’salright to have sex, protect yourself from STDs, and not get pregnant if you use birth control pills.” A few months later my cousin was cousin was diagnosed with HIV Aids and also found herself pregnant. I believe that sex education should be taught in school to inform people like my cousin about sex. Kids need the right information to protect themselves. People who don’t have any knowledge.

about sex might go out and do something not knowing the consequences of their actions. Sex educationmight also encourage teens to remain or become abstinent.

Sex education should be taught in school because kids need the right information to protectthemselves. The U.S. has more than double the teenage pregnancy rate of any western industrilizedcountry with more than 1 million teens becoming pregnant each year. Read more…