Cbest - Back to Basics

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Topic: A recent movement in education has been called "Back to Basics." Its proponents argue that the curriculum should concentrate only on reading, writing and mathematics skills and completely ignore such courses as sociology, art appreciation, and drama. Imagine that you are a school principal faced with the task of making policy for your school. PResent your argument(s) either for or against "Back to Basics."

Recently, discussions on "Back to Basics" curriculum awakened. Newpaper columnists and school educators express different opinions whether it is a good or bad policy public schools. I support proponents of "Back to Basics" curriculum in their stand that the curriculum should concentrate only on reading, writing and mathematics skills instead of other courses. True indeed that the said curriculum may have minor flaws. However, its flaws outweights the benefits it provides to our students. Back to Basic curriculum improves student's skill, minimizes school expenditures and strengthens students competitiveness.

A district director in Arizona in an interview by USA Today, testified that the implementation of the said curriculum brought an improvement in their fifth grade level during state aptitude test last year. The district director marked a consistent increase again by the end of this schoolyear. Noting that the number of students who pass the test increased by about 20-25% this year. The district attributed the improvement in focusing their curriculum in mathematics especially in basic algebra. The district spend a lot of time and effort training their teacher to be highly qualified in mathematics. Teachers were given all the support to adapt new strategies and methods to make mathematics interesting and motivating to students. Moreso, Greensboro School District is another advocate of the "Back to Basics" curriculum who gained much improvement in their student's writing ability. Greensboro adapted a unique system called "Writer's Notebook Project" whereby student's are tasked to write everything in their journal. Students as young as kindergarden are trained to write whatever they feel in a journal. Sometimes free essay topics are given. Sometimes teacher assigns homeworks with topics relating to issues like current news, favorite movies, modern technology and current fashions. Sometimes students are asked to read a short essay or story and are asked to express their different heresays or point of views in writing.

The curriculum not only improves student's skill but is also serves as a solution to our current problem, the budget cut. With the Great Depression soaring high this year, districts will have to spend money in areas like mathematics and english literacy (reading and writing skills). I have read last month an article from San Francisco Chronicle exposing some district school who spends much of their budget every 7 years in purchasing new books. Just imagine your school district spend money in changing a History book every 7 years. Does American history changed that much since we are preschoolers? Is it justifiable to continue changing books amidst the tremendous budget cut for education? Of course not! the money may should be saved for a more reasonable school projects. Moreso, school district spends a lot of money in programs to support drama and physical education such as high school drama shows and sports competition. It would be awesome if the money is saved to further increase teacher's salaries. The shift in implementing "Back to Basics" curriculum from traditional system will provide more employment to highly skilled professionals like computer programmers, accountants and authors/writers who were layed off from their jobs. This will create a paradigm shift from traditional teaching into a more functional approach. I believe skilled professionals can bring positive benefits to students given their years of experience in actual work field. It would be nice if a student learns the real application of mathematics in real life in lieu of the boring pen and paper task. Besides, with the Great Depression affecting our economy what we need now is to ensure that we teachers can equip our students with basic skills for them to survive and find skilled jobs in the future.

Skilled professionals are the survivor in today's realm. They are the people who are well versed in basic skills and had the ability to pursue courses related to medicine, computer and education etc. In reality, skilled professionals are able to adjust in our current economic crisis. They are able to shift from one career to another given their academic skills. For example, a teacher can easily find means to pursue second degree like programming because she is equipped with basic english and math skills. Accountants too given their excellence in math skills can easily shift into programming. However, a grocery attendant may find it hard to compete with others in finding high paying job due to lack of basic skills. Our country has been lenient, resulting to a high statistics of students who did not finish high school. Instead of pursuing college they prefer to work in a nearby grocery or gasoline station. With the current crisis, those people who lack education and who have less basic skills are those who easily get layed off.

Back to Basic curriculum is a way to strengthen our educational system. As it focus on basic skills alone, students will be more trained on what is important, to learn how to read, write and excel in math. Students will be able to focus and refrain from other activities like drama and sports. Besides a good teacher will always be able to find means to incorporate other courses in classroom discussion, especially in topic writing. Our district need not spend much program to enhance other courses anymore. Back to Basic curriculum is sufficient to improves student's skill, minimizes school expenditures and strengthens students competitiveness. As the saying goes, what is important is life are only the basics.

One strength of this essay is your use of supporting evidence. However, you will need to work on your own basics if you want to pass the CBEST. You strive for high style, but this is undercut by very many very basic errors, such as use of the singular form of a word when the plural form is needed. Here are a few corrections:

Newpaper columnists and school educators express different opinions concerning whether it is a good or bad policy for public schools.

The Back to Basic curriculum improves students' skills , minimizes school expenditures and strengthens students' competitiveness.

NB:
student = one student
students = two or more students
student's achievement = the achievement of one student
students' achievement = the achievement of two or more students

Skilled professionals are the survivors in today's realm.

Just imagine your school district spends money in changing a History book every seven years. Has American history changed that much since we were preschoolers? Is it justifiable to continue changing books amidst the tremendous budget cuts for education? Of course not!

By the way, I can't believe you are arguing against updating textbooks. In so doing, you showcase your own lack of knowledge. You may want to rethink taking such stances if you will be taking the CBEST in hopes of gaining a job in education.


First of all, the Great Depression was an historical event. Some people liken what's happening now to the Great Depression but we are not in the Great Depression now. Second, depressions can't soar. A depression goes downward, not upward.

In summary: Your writing is creative and you have used sources well, but you need to be much more careful about the basics in order to pass the CBEST.