A little more about education in the United States...

Recently I've presented a couple of lectures and also had some discussions with you guys about education in the United States.  To add specifically to today's lecture, and to add some things that I never seem to get to during the hour lectures, I wanted to share a couple of useful resources I used while preparing the education lectures.

The first is the documentary film "Waiting for Superman."  It analyzes some of the deep-rooted problems in the U.S. education system, focusing primarily on elementary schools.  As my lecture today only included an overview of the typical American school, I HIGHLY recommend watching this film to get a good idea of the problems the U.S. is facing in education.  Also, though the film highlights complicated issues that we haven't yet found solutions to, it motivated me to self reflect on my own role as a possible future educator in the U.S.  As future educators yourselves (even if you're not sure yet!) it's definitely worth watching.  I found the whole thing cut up into separate videos on Youtube:

One more thing, several of you have asked me how Americans pay for college when all of the options are so expensive.  Here is a link to an article with a good breakdown of how a great number of Americans are able to do this: How Americans Pay for College

And, on a totally but not so totally unrelated note, a little song for you to listen to by a very similar title to the documentary I just wrote about.  Great song.  Great band.