Cultural

Education has traditionally served for uniting people together, i.e. Americanization. The idea that education should help to reduce differences in social and ethnic background has been widely accepted. Education has always been seen as a way of “bettering yourself” or “raising in the world”. These are essential ingredients of the American Dream.

2. Schools in the usa

As it goes in every country, formal education in the USA is divided into various stages or levels. They follow one another. First comes preelementary education, then elementary education, secondary education and higher education. One stage should be completed before continuing.

Preelementary education is designed for children of 5 and younger. It gives skills for school. The emphasis is given to developing interest for learning. All children attend some kind of preelementary school. These may be nursery schools or kindergartens.

Preelementary education

Nursery schools are operated by individuals or private organizations. They are for children of 3-4 years of the age, they learn something and are supervised. There’s very interesting nursery school program, called Head Start. It’s federal program. Research shows that this federal program has been a success.

There are also dozens of day-care or child-care centers for children, also sponsored by public or private organization. These centers in certain respect resemble nursery schools, but some of them only provide care for children and don’t offer any education at all.

Many schools operate kindergartens. Kindergartens are mainly for children of 5-6 years old. They serve and preparatory institution for children who are going to attend this primary school.

Elementary schools

Children attend them from about 6-7 to about 12-14. Usually stars with 1^st grade. Are sometimes called grade schools or grammar schools. Traditional elementary schools are divided into 6 or 8 grades. Children usually have one teacher for all of the day. This system is sometimes called a self-contained classroom.

Some elementary schools have departed from traditional method organization – these are non-graded schools. There people are not grouped according to age. Children of different age meet together for different activities, events and even subject. Each student is encouraged to advance at their own rate. Practice shows it really works in certain cases. These groups are composed of children of similar abilities and/or interests. In most of these schools children receive certain evaluations rather than grades and do achievement tests. Pupils transfer to secondary school provided their general progress was rather satisfactory. This is called continuous progress plan. They work in a team. Each teacher may teach a certain subject to the entire group.

In some elementary schools open-space classrooms have replaced traditional classrooms. The space is used differently. Some of it is for certain studies, projects, some for group activities.

Many children have to travel quite a long distance to the school, thus there’s a long-established institution called a school bus. When it stops, all the traffic must stop.