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 deprivation and rather unsettled, but the first educational institutions began 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, it is funded by state budgets, federal and local. But the system of higher education in the United States is designed so 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 school and its duration varies. For children, education in the United States usually begins at the age of five to eight, and ends at the age of eighteen to nineteen. First, American children go to elementary school and study in it until the fifth or sixth grade (depending on the school district). Then they go to high school, where the education ends in the eighth grade. The senior, or higher, school is the ninth to twelfth grades.
Girls and boys who have gone to school in the United States can go to college. After studying there for two years, they receive a degree that is equivalent to secondary special education in Russia. And you can unlearn in college or immediately university for four years and get a bachelor's degree. Those who wish can then continue their studies even further and in two or three years get a master's or doctor's degree.
Primary School
Here children from the age of five to eleven to twelve are trained. As in Russia, all subjects are taught by one teacher, with the exception of music, art and physical education. Among the academic subjects, the curriculum includes arithmetic (sometimes - initial algebra), writing, reading. Social and natural sciences in elementary school are studied little and often take the form of local history. The features of education in the United States are such that the training consists largely of excursions, art projects and entertainment. This form of study came from the course of progressive education, which appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century, which taught that children should receive knowledge through everyday actions and analysis of their consequences.
high school
Pupils from eleven to twelve to fourteen years of age study here. Each teacher teaches his subject. The curriculum includes English, mathematics, social and natural sciences, physical education. Also, children can independently choose one or two classes of education for themselves: as a rule, these are subjects from the field of art, foreign languages and technologies.
In high school, students begin to divide into streams: ordinary and advanced. Well-performing children gather in “honorary” classes, in which all the material is faster and higher educational requirements are set. However, such school education in the USA is criticized now: many experts believe that the separation of well-performing and lagging students does not give the latter an incentive to catch up.
High school
This is the last stage of secondary education, including education in the ninth to twelfth grades. In high school, students are given more freedom in choosing subjects for study. To obtain a diploma, the minimum requirements set by the school board are provided.
Higher Education in the USA
There are about 4,500 higher education institutions in the country. More than fifty percent of students choose to study in a six-year program (undergraduate + graduate). Education in the United States annually receives more than half a million foreign students, more than half of them are representatives of Asian countries. The cost of training is growing every year, and this applies to both state and private universities. For a year of study, you have to spend from five to forty thousand dollars (depending on the educational institution). At the same time, many universities pay generous scholarships to low-income students. In colloquial speech, Americans usually call all higher education institutions colleges, even if in reality it is not a college, but a university.
Types of Universities
Higher education in the United States can conditionally be 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 beyond 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 in recent years, large state colleges for talented young people have begun to form. According to American laws, a resident of the locality where they are located can enter such educational institutions, but in fact it is quite difficult to do. Since the standards of instruction are different in different schools, colleges do not really trust the marks 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 educational institutions. Moreover, in terms of prestige, the former are somewhat inferior to the latter. The main goal of state universities is to educate students in their region, and competition is being set up for young people from other states and higher tuition fees will be charged. 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 wish to study in the United States flock to the best state universities, including Michigan and Virginia, as well as the University of California at Berkeley.
Private higher education institutions include the most famous American universities, namely Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Most private universities are medium-sized, but there are very small ones (for example, Caltech) and very large ones (for example, the University of Southern California).
US level of education
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 over the age of twenty-five had a secondary specialized education (school + two-year college), and 30 percent had a bachelor's degree (school + four-year college or university).
Unlike the successes of higher education, secondary education in the United States is experiencing a number of difficulties. According to the United States Secretary of Education, the school system in the country is now in stagnation and cannot compete with many other states. About 25 percent of American students are not able to complete their studies on time because they do not cope with the final exams.
Finally
Despite a number of problems, the education system in the United States has established itself as one of the best in the world. Tens of thousands of people annually come to the United States of America from different countries with only one purpose - to study at American colleges and universities. There are more higher education institutions in the US than in any other state. And universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, Princeton, have long become synonymous with the highest level of education worldwide. People who graduate from them have every chance in the future to build a successful career.