The Autonomy of American Education

The Autonomy of American Education

Education in the United States, to a large degree, is very successful. The success is owed to a lot of many factors. I think the autonomy of American education is one of them.

From my perspective, the autonomy is reflected in three aspects. First and foremost, the state has the right, which is not delegated to the United States, to manage education. From the textbook, we can know that “from Hawaii to Delaware, from Alaska to Louisiana, each of the 50 states in the United States has its own laws regulating education” (Zhu, P119). At the same time, every state has its own schools, including public and private schools, according to its reality of the situation such as the religions, the customs and so on. As a result, among the private schools, many of them are run by religious groups. After all, the power of the religion can not be neglected. Of course, this can also prove the autonomy.

Besides, the school itself, whether public or private can decide the expenditure, so does the school curriculum. Of course, this is a kind of autonomy. However, the spending in the public schools is under the guidance of the boards of education, while the private schools use the money they think best. So I think they can take advantage of the money properly. As to the curriculum, as for me, it is also a kind of flexibility. Schools set the curricula not only on the basis of the demand of the students themselves and the society, but also the requirements from the parents. The society is always changing and the economy, science and technology are developing. The

demands of the society for the persons with ability are also changing. So in many cases, the students that are trained by schools should adapt to the needs of the continuous changes. In the meantime, social problems continue to appear, especially the global environmental problems, resource issues and so forth. In such conditions, students need to learn much about the society, even the global issues that widely draw people’s attention. Correspondingly, schools can set some courses. This obviously reflects the flexibility of education. In the United States, an education worker’s duty is not to tell the students how to think, but require students to find, to survey, and to summarize the theory of what they think is right. All the schools in the United States in primary and middle school students have to pay more attention to their thinking ability to help the students to own a pioneering type of development, not a blindly force-feed type of education.

Finally, the study of the students also has the autonomy. There are many elective courses in the universities. College students can choose some of them according to their own interests. In the academic researches, students have a lot of autonomy. From the standpoint of the concept of development, it would seem that as a country achieves a higher level of development, interest in the autonomy of the university may decreases in many countries. However, the United States is not. Academic freedom for its part is closely connected with autonomy because of the primary criterion that academic freedom can not exist without the autonomy. Sometimes, the autonomy of the universities is always depending on the political democracy. America is a democratic country; people pursue the freedom in the politics and in other aspects,

such as the education, speech and so on. Apparently, this denies the ability of the universities themselves. The students need more autonomy in their daily study. In the United States, the autonomy of thinking is very important, not blindly accept and digestion. In my opinion, the autonomy in the schools is necessary and it can cultivate the students’ interests and inspire the students’ creativity.

To sum up, the autonomy is a vital factor that can provide an unceasing flow of vigor to the education of the United States. In the final analysis, the autonomy of American education is beneficial to the development of the country.

Work Cited

1. Zhu Yongtao, The Society and Culture of Major English-speaking Countries—An Introduction；

2. 流水，美国教育强调自主性思维； 3. 梁戈，论美国高等教育的独立性.