The Failure Of Education In America

We learn history for a variety of reasons, the most important being learning from our mistakes. America has developed a bad habit of not learning from its mistakes as well as not fully understanding the nature of these mistakes. A lot of this has to do with our society wanting to forget the awful things that occured in order for America to become what it is today. As a result, we have generated a narrative that is not reflective of the actual reality of our nation and thus find ourselves in a cycle of keeping various damaging issues ingrained within our culture. Take education for example. The common belief is that education in America is meant to give “all children and equal opportunity to make it” (Bowles 4). While this what the ideal educational

American was formed off the genocide of its indigenous people and the exploitation and enslavement of Africans at the hands of European nations. Their justification for this was the creation of the social construct of race as a means of separating the different ethnicities and establishing the supremacy and dominance of Europeans. Race’s role in American society did not end with the abolishment of slavery, because it was a defining factor in the establishment of our capitalist system. Because of this “racism has been a normal daily fact of life in society and the ideology and assumptions of racism are ingrained in the political and legal structures as to be almost unrecognizable” (Lynn 260). By taking a closer look at this statement one can see just how much of an impact race has had on our society. First they claim that racism has been normalized, meaning that a majority of us see racism as a societal standard and that it has always been that way even though racism was a creation and not something natural. Then there is the statement about racism being integrated into our “legal structure” meaning that the laws that govern our nation were written

We are still reinforcing this today with our increased emphasis on culturally biased testing, defunding of public education, eurocentric curriculums, not treating the profession with the respect it deserves and many other small things that keep reinforcing inequality. There are steps that can be taken to successfully reform education and remove inequality, but this starts with learning from and understanding our history and how race means everything in