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Youth Voice: CapersThe Other Side of Education
Amanda Capers
8th grade
New York, NY
Dear Harvard University,
My name is Amanda Capers, and I feel the education or shall I say the public education system is flawed. In most schools all the teachers are able to teach is what’s going to be on those stupid, “No Child Left Behind” insisted, state tests. It doesn’t allow them to make the learning process fun. They sit there and teach by the book making class so boring that kids start to doze off and even fall asleep. I know that I caught a few Z’s in classes that seemed extremely boring. But on top of that you don’t learn anything interesting. In my case my school is special in a way where we don’t exactly have to follow the “book” but because of that we have to take more of those periodic tests year round. I like it better that way except for the test, I’m not very fond of tests but fairly good at them. A quote that President Barack Obama made states that “We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw up our hand and walk away from them.” But quite frankly it seems like no one cares. Or shall I say the schools uptown in their eyes don’t deserve the attention. All the so called “good” schools are downtown because of the area in which they’re in, and that irks my nerves. For one, there are schools downtown that aren’t all that good. But on top of that when a school is bad, people always jump on the students. Most of them, it’s sad to say, happen to be the Black or Hispanic (also known as urban/minority) students. But what about the fact that it could be the teachers or the principal/deans as well as the students. Sometimes I actually wished I went to schools with people solely of my own race because as much as I don’t want to believe it people are prejudice and it’s just annoying. But hopefully having President Barack Obama in office will fix some, if not all, of the problems that occur in the public school system. That includes the flaws that follow the “No Child Left Behind” law including the fact that even if a child has improved two reading levels, if they haven’t reached the level of the grade they’re in, the test won’t show that and then they’ll fail even though they have been making progress. But all in all I have faith in Barack Obama and everything about him.
Sincerely yours,
Amanda Capers
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