Kathy Tran

2018 Nov 26
Professor Turner
CTW I | 11:45-12:50 PM
Section 1. Reflecting on your writing process

How did you begin? What was your reading process like? What about planning/drafting?

I began by looking at my past journal entries and class activities. I then planned out what to write
in each paragraph and created my thesis. For my reading process, I looked back at the notes and
annotations I wrote for each of the texts. I then chose which texts best supported my essay’s ar-
guments!

Section 2. What part of this writing assignment are you struggling with? Can
you highlight 2 or 3 specific places in your draft for your partner to offer feed-
back on?

Try to avoid “grammar” and “format” as one of these three things. In our writing groups, we are
focusing on the higher order concerns like analysis and synthesis. However, if you do feel like
you need assistance with grammar, please feel free to set up an appointment with me or contact
the Writing Center.

What part of writing project 1 are you strug- What specific places in your draft show this
gling with? struggle?

1. Incorporating other sources into my essay The quotes or sources I used may have not
to support my arguments. been very effective or seem out of place, caus-
ing a weird flow.

2. Organizing my essay. Some paragraphs might be too long or certain

sentences might not have placed in effective
places.

Section 3. What part of this writing are you feeling good about?
I feel good about my arguments on why our current education system needs to change in certain
aspects and correct use of grammar!
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The Flaws of the American Education System

What is the purpose of school? Many would answer that schools are used to educate stu-

dents, to teach them how to be independent and prepare them for adulthood. But although I grad-

uated high school at the top of my class, I still lack the skills necessary to survive on my own as

an adult. My classes never taught me how to do my own taxes, get a job, buy a house, or cook

my own meals. And knowing these essential life skills and having a choice of what he or she

learns about are what truly helps a person succeed in life. The American education system’s fo-

cus on purely academic information and lack of education about social and essential life skills is

just one if its many flaws. Along with the restrictive use of a the same set of standards for mil-

lions of students and a lack of creativity, schools nationwide should change their outdated system

of education to better help students thrive creatively, individually, and intellectually.

One of the many things that affect and diminish the students’ learning process is how

schools in America place so much emphasis on testing and marks rather than the learning pro-

cess itself. From my own experience, throughout my education, I was much more focused on the

numbers, such as my GPA, test scores, and how many extracurriculars I was involved with, ra-

ther than the actual material I was learning about. Due to my background growing up in an Asian

household, my parents have always been quite strict on my grades. And as the eldest in my fam-

ily, I was viewed as a role model to my little cousins and had high expectations set on me to get

straight A’s in school. My parents have risked a lot to come to America for me to receive a good

education and better opportunities and thus, I felt obligated to not disappoint them. Furthermore,

America’s current education system places such an extreme amount of pressure on students to

perform well on standardized tests and to get good scores on exams. The current grading system

also emphasizes testing based on memorization rather than actual subject material. Hence, for
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most exams, I merely memorized and crammed subject material for the test so I could write it

down on the test paper, and then would immediately forget all the information afterwards.

Through this extreme focus on testing and numbers, America’s education system forces myself

as well as many other students to prioritize memorizing well for tests instead of the actual learn-

ing process. Another negative to this flaw is that because of the high emphasis to do well on

tests, our education system discourages making mistakes. I’m very familiar with avoiding eye

contact with my teachers because I was scared of getting called on and getting the answer wrong

in front of my peers. Or getting a B on an exam in fear that I would disappoint my parents or that

others would think I wasn’t as smart as they thought I’d be. Consequently, I developed a big fear

for making mistakes and failures. Instead of helping students learn from their mistakes and how

to fix them, schools have been telling students that if they don’t get good marks, they won’t

make it to a good college or university and be successful in life. They discourage failures as a

whole and fail to see them as learning opportunities. In the book, Just Mercy, the author, Bryan

Stevenson, describes his experience as a lawyer for prisoners on death row that do not have the

money or sufficient resources for effective representation. Through the stories of his clients de-

scribed in the book, Stevenson argues how the majority of the public as well as America’s crimi-

nal justice system only see prisoners as bad people who committed evil crimes and fail to look at

the deeper connection of them as human equals who also make mistakes. Like our education sys-

tem, America’s criminal justice system treats prisoners as people who has failed in life and pun-

ishes them for their mistakes. Thus, in his book, Stevenson argues that the criminal justice sys-

tem should focus on rehabilitation instead, helping prisoners learn from their mistakes and

crimes to become better people. Likewise, schools should also adopt this aspect of teaching stu-
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dents how to fix their mistakes instead of avoiding them. Students would learn how to thrive suc-

cessfully much more effectively if the grading system treated making mistakes as learning op-

portunities for students rather than as detriments to student marks.

Another flaw of our education system is their use of the same set of standards to educate

the unique brains of millions of students. No two brains think alike yet, America’s schools be-

lieve a specific amount of the same academic information is supposed to provide the pathway to

success for every student. Outdated curriculum guidelines and standards are placed on the teach-

ers, requiring them to teach students in specific ways, such as the controversial Common Core

taught in middle schools and high schools. As a consequence, the majority of schools ignore the

fact that every person learns differently and requires different amounts of information, ways of

learning, and time to fully grasp academic concepts. In some cases, our education system even

goes as far as punishing students for their learning processes. Rebecca Moore Howard’s “Plagia-

risms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty” is an academic essay that questions the

controversial concept and misconception of academic plagiarism. In her essay, she establishes

the possibility of students having educational and commendable reasons for engaging in patch-

writing, a type of plagiarism, arguing that many feel the need to patchwrite due to their unfamili-

arity and lack of understanding on the subject material they are writing about. In this case, patch-

writing is a way of learning that helps students improve their writing. It gives students a starting

point in their writing process by allowing them to paraphrase and interpret the source in their

own words, and helps them better comprehend subject material. Howard writes, “ . . . patchwrit-

ing is not always a form of academic dishonesty . . . patchwriting can actually help the learner

begin to understand the unfamiliar material,” (Howard 799). This quote allows Howard to con-
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vinces readers that patchwriting is a way of learning for many students and can be used as an ed-

ucational tool that helps spark ideas within writers who have yet grasped the main idea of the

text. And thus, schools shouldn’t punish students for their learning processes and be more open

to how students learn. Like patchwriting, students have numerous other ways and learning styles

to understand subject material. Some are visual learners, preferring pictures and images to under-

stand material. Some students are aural learners, favoring using sound and music to learn. Yet,

schools focus on using textbooks as the primary means of educating students, confining the ways

they can process and retain information. To conclude, by abandoning the use of a standard tem-

plate or formula to educate students and instead, focusing on helping students retain information

in the learning styles they prefer, students would be able to learn about subject material more ef-

ficiently and effectively.

Another major flaw of the current American education system is the lack and discourage-

ment of creativity and diversity in classrooms. America’s education system mainly revolves

around math, reading, and writing. Combined with a focus on natural sciences and American his-

tory, it leaves little room for art, music, and cultural programs. As a result, students are unable to

expand their creativity. Furthermore, most writing classes limit student writing to a five-para-

graph format and math classes require specific steps students have to complete to gain maximum

points. Students are not encouraged to think in different, creative ways to solve problems and see

things in new ways. Schools in America offer very little cultural and ethnic programs as well be-

cause they see little value to art and ethnic programs. On the contrary, recent research have actu-

ally shown that arts and multicultural education help students excel better in school. According

to Precious Knowledge, an educational documentary about the banning of the Mexican-Ameri-

can Studies (MAS) Program in the Tucson Unified School District of Arizona, “students taking
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Ethnic Studies classes show significant improvement on Arizona standardized tests. For the past

six years, the graduation rate for students enrolled in Ethnic Studies electives has averaged 93%”

(TUSD). In this quote, the TUSD provides useful statistics of how their ethnic studies electives

have helped increase student scores and graduation rates. Additionally, the documentary argues

that ethnic studies connects learning with the students’ identities and motivates students to par-

ticipate in class and voice their opinions. Art programs also enhance students’ education and

overall development as well. Not only do they improve student creativity, arts education also

helps promote cultural awareness, social and emotional development, and academic achieve-

ment. All in all, America’s schools should fund more cultural and arts programs to enhance stu-

dents’ creativity and identities.

America flourishes ahead of other foreign countries in many aspects, such as technology

and economics, but the American education system is not one of them. Due to an outdated edu-

cation system, using the same concept of textbooks and classrooms as many decades of the past,

America’s schools have fallen behind to countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, who pro-

vide completely different styles of education than the U.S.. By fixing the American education

system’s grading policies, ignorance to students’ different learning styles, and lack of creativity

and diversity. American schools are better likely to catch up to their foreign peers and help stu-

dents thrive more creatively and individually and learn more effectively and efficiently.
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Works Cited

Howard, Rebecca Moore. “Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty.” Col-

lege English, vol. 57, no. 7, 1995, pp. 788–806. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/sta-

ble/378403. 20 Sept. 2018

McGinnis, Eren Isabel. “Precious Knowledge.” Directed by Ari Luis Palos, Dos Vatos Produc-

tions, 18 March 2011.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A story of justice and redemption. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.