The development of education in the United States began in the first half of the seventeenth century. The life of the colonists who arrived in the country at that time was full of hardships and rather unsettled, but the first educational institutions had already begun to open - these were both small schools and rather large educational centers. For example, the well-known Harvard University was founded in 1636.
Secondary education in America is predominantly public, funded by state, federal and local budgets. But the system of higher education in the United States is arranged in such a way that most universities operate on a private basis, so they strive to attract students from all over the world.
Structure
Depending on the state, the age for starting training and its duration varies. For children, education in the United States, as a rule, begins at the age of five or eight, and ends at the age of eighteen or nineteen. First, American children go to elementary school and study there until the fifth or sixth grade (depending on the schoolcounty). Then they enter the secondary school, where education ends with the eighth grade. The senior, or higher, school is the ninth-twelfth grades.
Girls and boys who complete their schooling in the US can go to college. After studying there for two years, they receive a degree that is equivalent to a secondary specialized education in Russia. Or you can study at a college or immediately at the university for four years and get a bachelor's degree. Those who wish can then continue their studies even further and receive a master's or doctoral degree in two or three years.
Primary school
Children aged from five to eleven or twelve study here. As in Russia, all subjects are taught by one teacher, with the exception of music, fine arts and physical education. Among the academic subjects, the curriculum includes arithmetic (sometimes elementary algebra), writing, reading. Social and natural sciences are little studied in elementary school and often take the form of local history. Features of education in the United States are such that education largely consists of excursions, art projects and entertainment. This form of learning evolved from the current of progressive education that emerged in the early twentieth century, which taught that children should gain knowledge through everyday actions and the analysis of their consequences.
High School
Schoolchildren from eleven to twelve to fourteen years old study here. Every teacherteaches his subject. The curriculum includes English, mathematics, social and natural sciences, physical education. Also, children can independently choose one or two more classes for themselves: as a rule, these are subjects from the field of art, foreign languages and technologies.
In secondary school, students begin to be divided into streams: ordinary and advanced. Well-performing children are going to "honorary" classes, in which all the material is completed faster and there are increased requirements for learning. However, such schooling in the United States is now being criticized: many experts believe that the separation of well-performing and lagging students does not give an incentive for the latter to catch up.
High School
This is the last stage of secondary education, including education in the ninth through twelfth grades. In high school, students are given more freedom in choosing subjects to study. There are minimum requirements set by the school board for graduation.
U. S. Higher Education
There are about 4.5 thousand higher education institutions in the country. More than fifty percent of students choose to study in a six-year program (bachelor's + master's). More than half a million foreign students annually receive education in the United States, more than half of them are representatives of Asian countries. The cost of education is growing every year, and this applies to both public and private universities. For a year of study, you have to lay out from five to fortythousand dollars (depending on the educational institution). At the same time, many universities pay generous scholarships to low-income students. In colloquial speech, Americans usually refer to all higher education institutions as colleges, even if in fact it is not a college, but a university.
Types of universities
Higher education in the US can be conditionally divided into three types. Educational institutions differ mainly in the atmosphere and the number of students. The college differs from the university in the absence / presence of research programs and graduate school.
In colleges, students are mainly taught, and scientific work remains outside the scope of educational programs. As a rule, those colleges that offer a four-year education are private and small (accept up to two thousand students). Although recently large state colleges for talented young people have begun to form. According to American laws, a resident of the area where they are located can enter such educational institutions, but in reality this is quite difficult to do. Since different schools have different learning standards, colleges do not really trust the grades of applicants and provide their own exams for them.
All universities in the country are also divided into state universities, funded by the government, and private institutions. At the same time, the former are somewhat inferior to the latter in terms of prestige. The main goal of state universities is to educate students in their region, and a competition is established for young people from other states, and from themhigher tuition fees apply. In such universities, the quality of education often suffers due to too large groups, bureaucracy and insufficient attention of teachers to students. But despite this, many high school graduates and even foreign applicants who want to get an education in the United States flock to the best state universities, including Michigan and Virginia, as well as the University of California at Berkeley.
The most famous American universities belong to private higher education institutions, namely Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, California Institute of Technology (C altech). Most private universities are medium in size, but there are also very small ones (like C altech) and very large ones (like the University of Southern California).
US education level
Higher education in the United States is considered one of the best in the world. In general, the literacy rate of Americans reaches 99 percent. According to 2011 statistics, 86 percent of young people aged twenty-five or older had a secondary special education (school + two years of college), and 30 percent had a bachelor's degree (school + four years of college or university).
In contrast to the success of higher education institutions, secondary education in the US is experiencing a number of difficulties. As the United States Secretary of Education says, the school system in the country is now stagnating and cannot compete with many others.states. About 25 percent of American students fail to complete their studies on time because they fail their final exams.
In closing
Despite a number of problems, the US education system has established itself as one of the best in the world. Tens of thousands of people annually arrive in the United States of America from different countries with only one purpose - to study at American colleges and universities. There are more institutions of higher education in the United States than in any other state. And universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Princeton have long become synonymous with the highest level of education in the world. People who graduate from them have every chance to build a successful career in the future.
