The class was intently listening to the professor’s instructions in Astronomy class with globes in front of them. He asks the class, “Can someone yell out any city they want?”, I yell out the city of London, and he tells the class to put a dot on the city. Almost nobody knew where London was on a globe, they kept turning and turning before giving up and asking the professor for help or just googling it.

The issue I wish to discuss is the American education system and how it neglects teaching children about the entire world.

The American Education System neglects to teach its students about the entire world and create globally aware citizens who are fully educated. The issue is extremely controversial as education is an important part of everyone’s life yet people who grow up and live in the U.S. their entire life do not realize that they are not aware of the rest of the world.

For years it seems as though America has chosen to completely ignore that the United States is not the only country in the world. Global Education is not taught there. When students walk into their History classes or their Geography classes, they are taught only events about the U.S. over and over again.

The history and effects of not having a global education can be traced down by studies and even everyday people when they converse. This is an extremely crucial topic for people to know more about as it is important to know more about the world and get the education you deserve. If you are lucky enough to attend a school, then you should be taught not just about one country but the entire world.

Students in America are just not globally aware.

The curriculum in the U.S. high schools only focuses on the geography and history of America. It might sometimes touch on other countries but will never go in-depth. If people choose to learn more about the rest of the world, they usually have to wait until college in order to take a World History Class, which even then, focuses mainly on other countries' relations with America.

My position on this issue is that the government should make it absolutely mandatory to educate their students on the entire world, not only the United States of America. I believe that everyone deserves the right to the same education.

If you are lucky enough to go to school, then there is no reason for you to learn less than other schools.

Every single enrolled student should get the chance to be a globally aware citizen rather than only knowing slight information about their own country. I believe in this because, students deserve the right to know just as much about the world as people abroad do if they are lucky enough to get an education, less educated people create naivety in a whole generation and even country when talking to others or looking at posts online many students feel ‘stupid’ because of the comments towards them and not being able to have educated conversation with others.

Naiveté, by not knowing the simple location or history of other continents/countries leads to people not caring or knowing about what is happening with the rest of the world. This leads to people being Naïve. Being aware of your country is very important, however only knowing about your country is not.

Not having a global education leads to so many students struggling later on when studying or even just conversing about topics with people.

Additionally, not having a global education can lead to negativity from the rest of the world. Although it is best to ignore negativity, it still affects people, especially younger people.

For a small example, in a Washington Post Article Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister stated that “it might be nice" if Americans "paid a little more attention to the world” and “Having a little more of an awareness of what’s going on in the rest of the world, I think is, is what many Canadians would hope for Americans”. Also stated in the article was that “Americans are often found to be among the most ‘ignorant’ populations in the developed world.”

This issue is controversial because, from one side, people outside of America view Americans as “dumb” and “not educated”. They state that because of their lack of wanting their people to be globally aware makes their people extremely naïve and in their words “stupid”.

However, on the other side, people believe that it is completely normal for a country to only want to teach about their own country as that is the most important. Knowing about your own country is far more crucial to you than knowing about the rest of the world. They believe that if you need to know more you are able to do so yourself, but there is no need for extra work and extra information.

This causes issues because some people want to learn more and some do not. However, in almost all schools across America, there is no such thing as a student who is Globally Aware and knows all about the world, except for those students who self-taught themselves.

I find that those who oppose my position feel as though my position is against Americans and is spreading hatred towards them.

It is not.

They also feel as though American High Schools have enough global education. They should focus mainly on the US and only need to talk about one or two topics that are about other countries.

Additionally, they believe this position generalizes a lot, as it is impossible to check every history class in the nation. They also argue that there is no reason for a student living in the U.S. to know more about the rest of the world and not as much about their own country.

Also, adding more topics means more work which in turn causes more stress for the students. They believe that this is unnecessary as most students will stay in the US and won't further their study of History.

They claim that students who are interested in learning more should do so on their own time as each student who is able to attend school has resources and the ability to get books for free and search online. They believe that if stress levels were higher in students it could cause more students to end up depressed as stress and anxiety are key factors in depression.

All American schools were formed to have access to the Internet in 2003 according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Now although many believe that having access to the Internet would make it easier to educate students, this was not the case in most schools. In most schools, as time progressed, teachers found that it was easier to just tell the student to google it and there would be an answer.

This was mainly when it came to History, Science, and almost always English. For sciences, teachers would still explain many of the things that needed to be explained; however, as time progressed science classes spent less time doing labs in class and experimenting with the things learned, and more time doing research papers on ideas and concepts that students would forget about as soon as they handed in their paper. Moreover, as time passed, History was hardly taught how it used to be taught.

Global History stopped appearing in the chapters as it was not as important as American history in the educator’s minds. Also, they believed that if students were intrigued by another country’s history they should just research it themselves, as the internet is fast and they do not need to waste time on other countries.

Lastly, the internet was found to mainly dissolve English as a subject in school. Instead of learning cursive as many would in the 90s and before, students would take computer classes in their English class time to learn how to type quickly and well.

Students were taught that if they wanted to quickly advance an essay or paper they would just have to click on the synonym button which would proceed in making their paper sound far more intelligent without the student knowing what the words meant completely. This decreased the vocabulary intake of students.

Furthermore, recently, students have been searching for summaries of books, chapters, and texts instead of taking their time and reading through to completely understand the material assigned; which lowered their knowledge levels. Not to mention, students are now able to search for answers to most of their work and not have to think about the questions, which again led to them decreasing their knowledge and not having a full understanding of any subject.

One entity that will help facilitate the change is of course students, teachers, and parents but mainly the Department of Education and the Supreme Court.

A possible action on this problem would be for students, teachers, and parents to speak out about the issue. To start protests, pages, essays, and more on why they deserve and need to have a better and more fulfilling education system. Teachers can go to the boards and try to contact the head of the Education Systems. Parents and Students can spread the word.

The more people talk about it, the more likely there will be a change.