Ineffectiveness Of American Education

Most people grew up in the town, and stayed there to work in the mines for the rest of their lives (Hickam 14). There is a point in the book where Buck Trent, a star football player for the suspended Big Creek High School team, tears up when he starts talking about football and how a scholarship was his only chance to get out of the town of Coalwood and make something of himself (Hickam ). The suspension of the football team breaks Buck's dream of getting out of Coalwood and not having to work in the mines the rest of his life. .
             The techniques in which many teachers teach are not beneficial enough to prepare students for further education and professions. Teachers use methods and information that are irrelevant to actually acquiring and useful information. In certain cases, students may not be as intelligent as students at other schools, but, instead of trying to catch up with other schools, teachers are schooling the students in non-educational ways. The best example of this is in The Water is Wide, Pat Conroy's novel. Although the children on the island of Yamacraw are very poorly educated in all areas, Conroy decides to teach them about music, plays, and other subject matter that will not really help the children of the island much in the rest of their lives. When Conroy cannot come up with any way of teaching the children history, geography, and other such things, he turns to playing records of classical music for them. The only thing they even know anything about is music (Conroy 45-8). Conroy did not even use books for his classes. Anything he taught, he taught through speaking. "We used no books Nothing was written down." (Conroy 51) Teachers are also more concerned with making moral students instead of better educated ones. "Many schools now put a priority on helping teachers work with students with behavior problems." (Weissbourd 10) Instead of helping other students that are more advanced in their education, schools and teachers are slowing down the educational process in order to keep everyone on the same level.