Why the US school system doesn't work properly

I just watched the movie Lions for Lambs and I was surprised to find out that so many americans are so dumb. Well actually I wasn't really surprised because I've lived in the states and went to school there for a year. I was a senior at a small high school in West Virginia. It made me understand a lot of things about americans and why they have so little knowledge about the rest of the world and why so many are far behind the rest of the world. The problem in many cases is the learning methods. First of all they always use multiple choice tests and also in many cases they also use that in everyday assignmenst. In my point of view this is not a very effective way of learning. It's very easy to cheat and it doesn't make you think for yourself and come up with a critical answer. Another thing about the multiple chioce is that some people might just copy someone else's paper and not even read the quesitons. They also use worksheets that you're only supposed to fill in the blanks. This is not very effective either. You can find the same problem as in the multiple choice assignments because you can just copy someone else's paper and get an A without even thinking or get caught for cheating.

I think you learn more by coming up with your own answers in stead of just filling in blanks. Another good way to learn is to have projects where you have to do your own research and come up with a creative answers. Roleplay and discussions are also good ways to learn because if you have to put yourself in another ones position or make up your own opinion about things makes you think and develop a great communication skill at the same time. I also know that people need different ways to learn and some methods doesn't learn as fast in every way. But I know for sure that you don't learn much from multiple choice or already filled out worksheets, because you don't get the whole picture and you only learn the few things you need to put on the paper and the you forget everything.

The second problem is they're point of veiw of some things. Everything they learn is from the US point of view and they almost don't learn anything about other countries and world geography. Most high school students don't know much about world history or other cultures. And when most of them don't travel much, they get a really narrowminded sight of the world.