American Kids and the Education System

I observe a typical American high school. High school is a very challenging time for youth. Youths are subject to peer pressure, outside influence, and for some, even rebellion. The youth of America, today, are in a much different condition than adults ever were. Some of the issues children face today involve the most controversial subjects: sex, gender, drugs, and bullying.
Observing a typical English class, I notice a long haired girl play with hair as she inputs her opinion of the school to the class discussion.
“If the teachers try to screw with my grades or not give me what i deserve! I swear! I’ll get my mom on them! She’ll straighten them!”
As outspoken as this young women is, It fails me to understand why she would use her mom as a threat to teachers, whose jobs primarily are to give her what she deserves. Being a failing student in French and Math, she risks not passing the year as a freshman. Yet, amidst all her troubles, she still has time for drama, gossip, and most importantly: blaming all her faults on “bad” teachers. Her mother, what role does she play? Her mother does nothing to enforce her daughter’s failures, but rather, like her daughter, blame the teachers. This is unacceptable.

In the end, this is just one example of the problem playing America’s youth regarding school systems: bad school ethics and respect systems.
Take a look at an Asian country. Any, for instance. Even the schools which have no funds, poverty, and no resources have something even greater; something American schools don’t have: a respect system in which teachers and students abide by.
Some schools have no lighting, no desks, limited paper, and huge class sizes per teacher. Yet, these students succeed. How? What are we lacking? Being a global power, our access to technology and resources, yet we don’t rank first or even close to first on the global scale for math and science.
The mindset, these countries have developed is that they are learners. The teacher is wise; whom they must learn from. The teacher is not the one who is supposed to be worthy to teach them. They must be students worthy enough to be taught. In much of America, we have this mindset completely backwards. Unless this is changed, we will never succeed.

STEM

STEM is a rapidly growing idea for schools. STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Schools which are dubbed with this title, boast that they are part of a nationally accredited program in which they prepare students for the jobs in America that will fuel invention and innovation. The goal of said program is to push American students to be world leaders and competitors on the platform of math and science.
Being a STEM school, doesn’t automatically qualify you to be a great school. As much as the good intentions of the idea, it is completely useless until we rid ourselves of the “mindset” I explained earlier. Just about any type of school can be a “STEM” school. From Catholic, to Charter, to public schools. In fact, I know plenty well public schools that lack the mindset a school needs, yet are accredited with the “STEM” title. No sort of program (academically) can change America until the mindset is changed.
My neighbor’s daughter returned from school one day, and only God knows what she told her mother. When news was passed on to me, I found it hard to believe. Apparently, at her school, a teacher of kindergarteners showed up drunk that day; “the smell of liquor oozing from her mouth”, as a witness claimed. I can only imagine that in my wildest dreams. But later that day, when the gossip was confirmed by a local newspaper, I was shocked. The teacher was later fired. Are these the type of people that we expose our children to?