Who is to Blame?

It is not a secret that the American school systems are failing in comparison to other countries. They are so bad that many schools overseas will not take the American diploma because the standards are so much lower. America is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but it is not meant to be the home of the uneducated. Unfortunately, this is what we are becoming as a nation.

            Who is to blame for our lack of education? Davis Guggenheim directed the film, “Waiting for Superman” and he puts a lot of the blame on the teachers and their unions. He supports the notion that if principals were able to fire bad teachers and replace them with ones who were passionate about their students, that it would fix a majority of the problem. After all charter and magnet schools are succeeding far past the public ones and they have more freedoms when it comes to choosing teachers. Are the teachers really solely at fault though? It may seem like it sometimes though because if a teacher is not performing adequately, then they will produce poor students. What if the student has no motivation to do well though? A student needs a support system at home too, in order to be successful in learning. So, maybe it is not just the teachers, but a combination of teachers, students, and the families that students are coming from. When these three things are in working order, it produces a student’s desire to achieve.