FutureWatch 1: Youtube K-12 Criticism

Can the United States Education system keep up with the rest of the world? According to the youtube video, A Nation in Crisis: American's Educational System is Broken, it cannot, even citing that we are in danger of becoming a 3rd world labor market by the year 2030. How can this be? In my view we have excellent teacher training in our country, innovative technology, and wealth, but is it being utilized to its potential? Not according to the youtube.com video Pay Attention, which delivers a powerful message urging teachers to start using technology to teach more efficiently to engage students, and spark creativity of our youth. In this blog I will discuss the foregoing points and my reaction as an educator.
Watching the videos was eyeopening to me, and the statistic that jumped out was the U.S. ranking of the OECD countries:
How can the United States improve its educational system to maintain its status as a dominant world power? Thankfully, this issue is one of President Obama's priorities. An article in a recent issue of the Economist, highlighted the reasons U.S. children are lagging behind their European and Asian counterparts. For example, American children have one of the shortest school years, 180 days, compared to as many as 200 days in other OECD countries. American children also have one of the shortest school weeks, 32 hours a week, compared to a 60 hour school week in Denmark and Sweden. In addition, the long summer vacation acts as an "eraser" with children forgetting up to a month of instruction. President Obama has urged schools to "rethink the school day," wanting an overhaul of the school calendar, which originates from our farming days; he is pushing for longer school days and a longer school year.
Recovered from YouTube.com June 15,2009:
As an educator, I am happy with this plan and I believe that teachers need to continue to educate themselves on best practices. A small amount of U.S. schools have taken President Obama's advice. A charter school known as KIPP has instituted more education, increasing student's class time to 60% more than their peers resulting in higher test scores. However, in this economic crisis and without more funding, it will be difficult for schools to change their traditional routine.