America Skips School Summary

The American education decline continues to plummet. The generation today academically knows less and is less literate than their parents’ generation. People blame this decline for so many different reasons, but those people can all agree on one central idea—children are not learning in the classroom. Benjamin Barber, in his article “America Skips School”, argues many reasons why children are not learning in the classroom. Barber confidently states that, “the reason for the country’s inaction is that Americans do not really care about education—the country has grown comfortable with the game of ‘let’s pretend we care’” (Barber, 2014, p. 2.). Barber thinks America has lost her focus about educating her young to become well-rounded citizens.

Jobs do not care for the information people know. Jobs care whether a person has experience in that work of field or not. This idea is true because the classroom education today does not push students to retain the information; the classroom teaches to pass the test or exam, and not to implement classroom learning into the real world. Jobs want experience, because employers know experience means actual knowledge and application on required tasks. Students in school see this thinking process, and react accordingly; which means putting more effort in the world, and less into the classroom. Students are becoming more “society-smart rather than school-smart” (Barber, 2014, p. 2.). They are picking up on the society’s cues on the importance of actions and not celebrating or desiring knowledge. So they realize to become successful they essentially must do away with the classroom and focus on real-world experience. Barber, in his article, brought up this idea: “The very first lesson smart kids learn is that it is much more important to heed what society teachers implicitly by its deeds and reward structures than what school teaches explicitly in its lessons plans and civic sermons.” (Barber, 2014, p. 3.). Americans are reward oriented; they almost never do work unless the work benefits them in the end. The classroom does not fulfill this desire from Americans. Besides appearing more educated, Americans do not

The improvements of technology have made education unnecessary because the accessibility of mobile phones has made knowledge more attainable. A person does not have to memorize facts and values from education. His only requirement is a phone plan with unlimited data to have all the resources of knowledge at his disposable; so, the student renders education as unnecessary and devotes most his time to the television set. Television has taken the younger generations as prisoners of war in the battle over education. Children spend their free time surrounding themselves in front of a television. Barber researched this idea and concluded that “Our kids spend 900 hours a year in school and from 1,200 to 1,800 hours a year in front of the television set. From which are they likely to learn?” (Barber, 2014, p. 3.). Children do not see education as important, otherwise, they would focus more of their time working towards achieving higher goals in educating instead of passing with the bare minimum. Instead, students fill their minds with views and values of the modern world—which limits students to extremely narrow thought processes. Since the school system is not pushing for students to improve in education, “can we blame kids for educating themselves on television trash” (Barber, 2014, p. 6.)? The school system does not emphasize education, and, as a result, education has dwindled in