SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT

School Development

School Development

Introduction

There is no argument regarding the fact that the American school system has inadequacies, but where exactly those issues are and how they should be solved is another discussion altogether. Public Education in the United States, programs of instruction offered to children, adolescents, and adults in the United States through schools and colleges operated by state and local governments. Unlike the nationally regulated and financed education systems of many other industrialized societies, American public education is primarily the responsibility of the states and individual school districts (Snyder, 2008, 152-163).

Discussion

The school system in the United States, differs to a great extent, but similarly underwent a vast amount of changes throughout this century. Programmes such as the Dalton Plan, the Winnetka Plan, and the Gary Plan, and from the pioneering work of F.W. Parker and notably John Dewey, which ushered in the "progressive education" of the 1920s and '30s, American schools, curricula, and teacher training have opened up in favour of flexible and co-operative methods pursued within a school seen as a learning community. The attempt to place the nature and experience of the child and the present life of the society at the centre of school activity was to last long after progressive education as a defined movement ended.

With time, America's secondary school attuned itself more and more to preparing the young for everyday living. Consequently, though it still served prospective collegians the time-honoured academic fare, it went to great lengths to accommodate the generality of young America with courses in automobile driving, cooking, carpentry, writing, and the like (Stewart, 2007, 8-14). In addition to changes in the form of earlier practical subjects, the curriculum has responded to social issues by including such subjects as consumer education, ethnic or multicultural education, environmental education, sex ...