From assured seats in public schools schools to free and quality education, the author lists 4 reasons why she loves the US public school system, despite its share of problems.
From assured seats in public schools to free and quality education, here are 4 reasons this mom loves the U.S. public school system, despite its share of problems.
When my Religion in the Media professor at American University instructed me to call him Jack, I visibly and violently recoiled. “But Professor, I can’t call you that! It’s so disrespectful.”
My professor was 70 years old, with a long-white beard. I’d been living in the U.S. for 2 years by then. I was enrolled in a Master’s program in Film, Video and New Media here in the U.S., and was steadily falling in love with the whole American system of education. I never did call my professor by his given name, but my love affair with America’s education system continued way beyond my American University days.
I now have a middle schooler and an elementary aged child, and am experiencing the public school system through them. There are plenty of pluses and minuses, of course, but here’re my top reasons for why I love the American system.
I live in the state of Maryland and here, elementary and middle school education is mandated. Rules vary state to state, but elementary level education is compulsory in most places. Not sending your child to school is actually a prosecutable offense – a child has to be enrolled in a public, or private school, or registered as being homeschooled.
As a parent, I can be assured that my child will definitely have a seat reserved for her in my zoned elementary, middle or high school. “Sorry, our seats are full” can never be put forward as an excuse by the zoned public school.
Not only is education a right, it’s free! If there are reasons why I find absolute joy in paying my taxes on time, they’re these: the public school system, the library and museum networks, the roads.
An American woman’s response against uniforms stopped me in my tracks. She said she had had a hard life, and she’d often had to settle for hand-me-downs or buy clothes from thrift stores. She said she embellished these items, and upcycled them into her own creations. If she’d been forced into conformity like everyone else, she would’ve died inside, she said.
I see the value of her comment now. In my daughter’s public school, you see kids walking in the door with hair dyed blue, pink, purple with Kool Aid. Older kids have visible tattoos, long hair, piercings. Eventually, when they head out to college, or enter the job market, which values conformity, many of them dial down their looks. Many of them don’t. All of it contributes to creativity, self-expression and ultimately diversity.
My husband and I wanted to know – shouldn’t kids be expected to know multiplication tables by rote, and do all their math calculations by hand? No, said the teacher, we’re okay with that. In the county school system, educators are much more focused on teaching concepts to the kids than on making sure they do everything manually.
The curriculum tries to relate what kids learn in one subject with what they’re learning in another. Which is how, one year, right around Halloween, my daughter’s 1st grade class read a Dr. Seuss poem in Reading and Learning, and learned to make oobleck, a gooey mess inspired by Dr. Seuss’s book, in Science class. Most 1st graders might not able to name the chemicals in oobleck, but what they’ve learned early on is how much fun it can be to make some.
Gun violence is a real threat in some schools. In such places, it is not uncommon to find metal detectors installed at entrances and security personnel on duty.
Activities and amenities at individual schools are largely dependent on funding. If School A has an active and involved PTA whose members show up for school board meetings, and School B doesn’t, it is possible that School A will get way more state funding for optional projects than School B.
Writer. wannabe-comic-strip creator. Naturalized US citizen, small town desi girl. Experimenting with micro fiction and screenwriting currently. read more...
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Netflix’s ‘House Of Secrets: The Burari Deaths’ dwells into the shocking death of an entire family of 11 in one night. It throws light on gender roles, superstitions & mental health in Indian households.
(Trigger Warning: This story delves into a documentary about alleged suicide/murder and may be triggering. Spoilers ahead).
Directed by Leena Yadav and Anubhav Chopra, Netflix’s latest three-episode documentary ‘House of secrets: The Burari Deaths’ traces what happened with the Bhatia family in 2018. On a usual summer morning, 11 members of the same family were found suspiciously hanging from the roof in the suburb of Burari. Later it was concluded to be an occult ritual gone wrong.
I could hear grandmother mumbling in the background, “I’ve served my family throughout my life. Never turned away from responsibility like this. She isn’t even going to work like Kala or Malathi. Why can’t she cook then?”
The breeze bullied the reeds forcing them to swish and sway to its vagaries, forwards and backwards, this way and that. Everything was as it had been yesterday and the day before. The cuckoo bird continued its ‘coo-coo-once-is-not-enough-here’s-another’, coo-coo call, pleased with its own poetics, its rhythm unfaltering. So much had transpired, yet nothing had changed.
Indian schools often take active part in moral policing/ honour-based abuse, especially of girls who are not just shamed for their dressing choices, but can also be in real danger for talking to boys and 'falling in love'.
Indian schools often take active part in moral policing/ honour-based abuse, especially of girls who are not just shamed for their dressing choices, but can also be in real danger for talking to boys and ‘falling in love’.
Recently, I watched ‘What will people say?’ on Netflix, India. This 2017 movie revolves around a girl named Nisha, who belongs to an immigrant family from Pakistan and lives in Norway. The movie highlights the continuum of honour-based violence prevalent in our society that often straddles from slut-shaming to killing.
Our country may have enough resources to fund a survey (NRC) but we don't have the infrastructure to carry it out. So why don't we focus on the issues at hand?
Our country may have enough resources to fund a survey (NRC) but we don’t have the infrastructure to carry it out. So why don’t we focus on the issues at hand?
Dear Prime Minister