SJBlog Post

I was inspired by reading “What’s Our Sputnik?” I agree with Friedman that we must shift our priorities and change our focus from trying to change others to striving to improve ourselves. The Space Race caused Americans to want to make the kind of advancements the Soviets were making. It caused us to challenge ourselves to meet a huge goal. I often am inspired by a quote from Jim Lovell’s character in the movie Apollo 13. After seeing Armstrong and Aldrin walk on the moon he says “It is not a miracle, we just decided to go.” I believe that we are capable of solving the problems that face our nation, if we just decide to do it. Like Friedman, I agree that we must set goals that make us “better educated, more productive, more technologically advanced and more ingenious” (Friedman, 2010). We must look inward and focus more on educating and making our citizens more passionate and better prepared for the twenty-first century. I feel Americans have lost sight of the power education gives the people. I think that education reforms are the only way to reignite our nation’s passion for education.

In Ohio, our new governor claims to see the need to reform the state of education in Ohio. In his state of the state address last week, Kasich said “he wants to link the needs of business with the curriculum in the classroom” (Magan & Kissell, 2011). He seemed to be aware of the importance of creating individuals that are equipped with skills to prosper in the twenty-first century. Reading these statements excited me about the possibilities for STEM education in Ohio, but that excitement was quickly followed by disappointment as I read his promises to cut funding for public schools. He also promised to introduce a program that would take experienced teachers out of failing schools and replace them with new college graduates with minimal training (Magan & Kissell, 2011). This type of reform is not the type that I feel is being enacted to excite our students about education. Instead of focusing on quick and easy budget fixes we have to get Americans to see the benefits of education. We must devote time and money into meeting the challenge of educating our youth in a new way that prepares them to deal with the challenges of this new world.

“Other nations have been transforming their school systems to meet the new demands of today’s world” (Darling-Hammond, 2010). Successful nations invest money into educating more of their population and revising educational systems to keep their students prepared with knowledge and skills needed to be successful in the twenty-first century. In America, we have made accountability our nation’s educational policy and have relied too much on lower level thinking tests to drive educational decisions (Darling-Hammond, 2010). America is no longer the world’s educational leader because we are putting more money into testing than teaching. It reminds me of the saying “You do not fatten a calf by weighing it, you fatten it by feeding it”. We must change our focus if we want to raise the achievement of our children. We must be willing to try new approaches and invest in training teachers to prepare all of our nation’s children to be skillful, literate members of the twenty-first century society.
References
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Restoring our schools. (cover story) Nation, 290(23) 14-
20.

Friedman, T. L. (2010, January 17). What’s our sputnik? [Op-Ed]. The New York Times [Late Edition (East Coast)], p. WK.8.

Magan, Christopher and Kissel, Margo Rutledge. (2011, March 11). Kasich wants students better prepared for jobs. Dayton Daily News. Retrieved from: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/kasich-wants-students-better-prepared-for-jobs-1103918.html