Elementary and Secondary Education

Because of the great variety of schools and colleges, and the many differences among them, none of the institutions can be singled out as enough basic similarities in structure among the various schools and system to permit some general comments.

Most schools start at the kindergarten level. There are some school districts that do not have this beginning phase, and others which have an additional “pre-school” one. There are almost always required subjects at each level. In some areas and more advanced levels, students can choose some subjects. Pupil who do not do well often have to repeat courses, or have to have special tutoring usually done in and by the schools. Many schools also support summer classes, where students can make up for failed courses or even take extra courses.

In addition to bilingual and bicultural education programs, many schools have reading difficulties. These and other programs repeat the emphasis of American education on trying to increase equality of opportunity. They also attempt to integrate students with varying abilities and backgrounds into an educational system shared by all. At the same time, high school student are given special advanced coursework in mathematics and the sciences. Nationwide talent searches for minority group children with special abilities and academic promise began on a large scale in the 1960 s. These programs have helped to bring more minority children into advanced levels of university education and into the professions.

Like schools in Britain and other English-speaking countries, those in the U.S. have also always stressed “character” or “social skills” through extracurricular activities, including organized sports. Because most schools start at around 8 o’clock every morning and classes often do not finish until 3 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, such activities mean that many students do not return home until the early evening. There is usually a very broad range of extracurricular activities available. Most schools, for instance publish their own student newspapers, and some have their own radio stations. Almost all have student’s orchestras, bands, and choirs, which give public performances. Spanish, or Germans clubs, groups which meet after school to discuss computers, or chemistry, or amateur radio, or the raising of prize horses and cows. Students can learn flying, skydiving, and mountain-climbing. They can act as volunteers in hospitals and homes for aged and do other public service work.

Many different sports are also available and most schools share their facilities-swimming pools, tennis courts, tracks and stadiums- with the public. Many sports that in other countries are normally offered by private clubs are available to students at no cost in American schools. Often the students themselves organize and support school activities and raise money through “car washes”, baby-sitting, bake sales, or by mowing lawns. Parents and local businesses often also help a group that, for example, has a chance to go to a state music competition, to compute in some sports championship, or take a camping trip. Such activities not only give peoples a chance to be together outside of normal classes, they also help develop a feeling of “school spirit” among the students and in the community.

Higher Education

The American ideal of mass education for all is matched by awareness that America also needs highly trained specialists. In higher education, therefore, and especially at the graduate schools (those following the first 4 years of college), the U.S. has an extremely competitive and highly selective system. This advanced university system has become widely imitated internationally and it is also the one most sought after the foreign students.36 % of more than 34.000 foreign students in the US in the academic year in 1984/85 were enrolled in graduate programs.

While the American education system might put off selecting students until much later than do other systems, it does nonetheless select. And it becomes increasingly selective at the higher level. Moreover, because each university generally sets its oven admission standards, the best universities are also most difficult to get into.

Some universities are very selective even at the undergraduate or beginning levels. In 1984 for example, some 15.600 individuals sought admission to Sandford University, a private University, in southern California.

Because these individuals must pay a fee to even apply for admission, these were “serious” applications. Of that number, only 2.500 (about 16 percent) were admitted for the first year of study. It’s interesting to note that 70 percent of those who were accepted had attended public-not private-schools. Many state-supported universities also have fairly rigid admission requirements. The University of California at Berkeley, for example, admitted about 65 percent of all “qualified” applicants in 1984.

For Harvard, the figure is 17% (1984). Admission to Law or Medical schools and other graduate programs has always been highly selective. It is true, as often stated, that children who wish someday to go to one of the better universities start working for this goal in elementary school.

Needless to say, those children who have attended better schools, or who come from families with better educated parents, often have an advantage over those who don’t. This remains a problem in the U.S, where equality of opportunity is a central cultural goal. Not surprisingly, the members of racial monitories are the most deprived in this respect. Yet, it is still a fact today, as the BBC commentator Alistair Cooke pointed out in 1972, that
”a black bay has a better chance of going to college here than practically any boy in Western Europe”.

In 1985, for instance, 19.4 percent of all Americans 25 years and older had completed four years of college or more. However, the figure for blacks was 11.1 percent and for Hispanics 8.5 percent. Compared with the figures from 1970, when the national average was only 10.7 percent (with 11.3 percent for whites, 4.4 percent for blacks, and 7.6 percent for students of Spanish origin), this does reveal a considerable improvement within just 14 years. Yet, the educational level is still relatively lower for some groups, including women. While 23.1 percent of male Americans had four years of college or more in 1985, only 16 percent of women had. The number of students who fail to complete high school, too, is much larger among minority groups. The national average of all 18 to 24-years-olds who did not graduate from high school was 22.1 percent in 1985. For white students it was 20.9 percent, for blacks 28.7 percent, and for Hispanics the figure was as much as 45.8 percent. Many different programs aimed at improving educational opportunities among minority groups exits at all levels-local, state, and federal.