Education in the United States
The development of education in the United States began in the first half of the seventeenth century. The life of the colonists who arrived in the country at that time was full of hardship and rather unsettled, but the first educational institutions began to open – they were both small schools and quite large educational centers. For example, the well-known Harvard University was founded in 1636.
Secondary education in America is predominantly public, it is financed by the state, Federal and local budgets. But the system of higher education in the United States is designed so that most universities operate on a private basis, so they seek to attract students from around the world.
Structure.
Depending on the state, the age and length of study vary. For children, education in the United States usually begins at the age of five to eight, and ends at the age of eighteen to nineteen. First, the American kids go to primary school and study in it until the fifth or sixth grade (depending on the school district). Then they go to a high school where they end up in eighth grade. The older, or senior, school is a ninth through twelfth grades.
Girls and boys who have completed their schooling in the United States can enter College. Having studied there for two years, they receive a degree that is equivalent to secondary special education in Russia. And you can go to College or University for four years and get a bachelor's degree. Those who wish can then continue their studies even further and get a master's or doctor's degree in two or three years.
Primary school.
Children aged from five to eleven-twelve years are trained here. As in Russia, all subjects are taught by one teacher, with the exception of music, visual arts and physical education. Among the academic subjects included in the curriculum arithmetic (sometimes – the initial algebra), writing, reading. Social and natural Sciences in primary school are studied little and often take the form of local lore. Features of education in the United States are such that the training largely consists of trips, art projects and entertainment. This form of learning came from the progressive education that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century, which taught that children should learn through everyday activities and analysis of their consequences.
Secondary school.
Here are students from eleven to twelve to fourteen years. Every teacher teaches his subject. The curriculum includes English, mathematics, social and natural Sciences, physical education. Also, children can independently choose another or two classes of training for themselves: as a rule, these are subjects from the field of art, foreign languages and technology.
In high school, students begin to divide into streams: ordinary and advanced. Good-performing children gather in the "honorary" classes, in which all the material is passed faster and meet the increased requirements for training. However, such school education in the United States is now being criticized: many experts believe that the separation of well-performing and lagging behind pupils does not give an incentive for the latter to catch up.
High school.
This is the last stage of secondary education, including education in the ninth to twelfth grades. In high school, students are given more freedom to choose subjects to study. The minimum requirements established by the school Board are to obtain a diploma.
Higher education in the United States.
There are about 4.5 thousand higher education institutions in the country. More than fifty percent of students choose to study on a six-year program (bachelor + master). Education in the United States annually receive more than half a million foreign students, more than half of them are representatives of Asian States. The cost of education is increasing every year, and this applies to both public and private universities. For a year of study it is necessary to spread from five to forty thousand dollars (depending on educational institution). However, many universities pay generous scholarships to low-income students. In colloquial speech, Americans usually call all higher education institutions colleges, even if it is not really a College, but a University.
Types of universities.
Higher education in the United States can be divided into three types. Educational institutions differ mainly in the atmosphere and the number of students. College from the University is characterized by the absence / presence of research programs and graduate school.
In colleges, students are mainly trained, and scientific work remains outside the scope of educational programs. As a rule, those colleges that require a four-year education are private and small (take up to two thousand students). Although in recent years began to form large colleges in the States for talented young people. According to American laws, such educational institutions may enter a resident of the area where they are located, but in fact it is quite difficult to do so. Since different schools have different standards of education, colleges do not trust the marks of entrants and provide for their exams.
All universities in the country are also divided into state universities funded by the government and private educational institutions. In the prestige first somewhat inferior to the second. The main purpose of state universities is to educate students in their region, and for young people from other States, a competition is established, and they are charged higher tuition fees. In such high schools, the quality of education is often affected by too many groups, bureaucracy and insufficient teachers ' attention to students. But, despite this, many school leavers and even foreign entrants wishing to study in the United States, rush to the best universities in the States, including Michigan and Virginia, as well as the University of California at Berkeley.
Private higher education institutions include the most famous American universities, namely Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of technology, Yale, California Institute of technology (Caltech). Most private universities are of medium size, but there are also very small (for example, kaltech) and very large (for example, the University of southern California).
The level of education in the United States.
Higher education in the United States is considered one of the best in the world. In General, the level of American literacy reaches 99 percent. According to statistics from 2011, 86 percent of young people aged twenty-five years had a secondary education (school + two years of College), and 30 percent – a bachelor's degree (school + four years of College or University).
Unlike the success of higher education institutions, secondary education in the United States is experiencing a number of difficulties. As the United States Secretary of education says, the school system is now stagnating and unable to compete with many other States. About 25 percent of American students are unable to complete their studies on time because they are unable to complete their final exams.
In conclusion.
Despite a number of problems, the education system in the United States has established itself as one of the best in the world. Tens of thousands of people come to the United States every year from different countries for only one purpose – to study in American colleges and universities. There are more institutions of higher education in the United States than in any other state. And universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Princeton, have long been synonymous with the highest level of education around the world. People who have graduated from them, have every chance in the future to build a successful career.