Today's learning environment is worse even if better equipped.
The present state of the learning environment is certainly improving from where it has been. We have gone to where teachers educated a room with children of all ages to several specialized teachers for each subject for every age group. Yet, even with these advances, students seem to be learning less than ever before. Dropout rates are higher, those who do make it through high school may not even go to college, and those who do make it may have troubles getting through. So why is it that even with the advances in available resources is it that students still fail at advance in their academic career? My thesis would be the environment the students grow up in has more to do with how they’re taught. A child with an environment promoting education has more of a chance of succeeding in said career than a child who grows up in an environment hostile to education. I know from experience that if I had grown up in a household that wasn’t as vigilant and more lax in the situation of education, I wouldn’t be in my current location, and in a less advantaged position. I have my parents to thank for this, their firm hand to keep me on course and stern voice to help me along the way. In fact, just like Haas and Flower demonstrate, they have become the voice I hear when I’m reading, I use them to guide me in rhetorical situations.

In today’s society, there are plenty of opportunities for the child to succeed. With the “no child left behind act”, every child has to have a chance to succeed, money is put into schools for new equipment, teachers are available to students after class hours, new technology is developed, yet the students don’t take advantage of this. Scholarships are given for hard work and perseverance in academic related activities, yet, only a select few take advantage of these. Why do only a select few take advantage of them, while the rest don’t? Again, the nature of their upbringing has a big role to play. I have seen who use the equipment not for their academic use, but for recreation. They use the money spent for education for their entertainment, because at home that’s what they can get away with.


Environmental Influences on Learning Environment
Many things surrounding a student affect the student’s psychic and tendency to learn. The first to come to mind when considering this aspect would the person’s upbringing, mainly supplied by their family. The family’s moralities have a big impact on this. A family who is dedicated to education will more likely raise a child that excels in his academic career. A big aspect that also affects this is the culture said family lives in. For example, in most Asiatic countries society focuses on the individual helping the community, not like the vice versus seen here in the western world. The individual is expected to excel in order to provide for society, and pressure is upon them to achieve this. Finally, the individual’s social status unfortunately can affect their education. While it has been striven to make an education available to every child, some can’t take advantage of these. An immigrant child will sometimes not go to school simply because he’s not in an area long enough for him or her to attend. Moll and Gonzales states that “ much of the household’s knowledge is related to its origins and, of course, to family members’ employment, occupations, work, including labor specific to household activities.”

The person’s background or history can influence their learning abilities. A child whose has a background of scholarly ancestors could be more strived to maintain the name they were given at birth. Then again, a child who lives in a poor environment may be incited to escape their past and make a name for themselves.
Lastly, their learning environment also influences how they learn. It may not be as easily observable things like the teacher methods, but the environment itself. If a student is in a lethargic environment, he will feel as such, and no matter how easily available information is present, he will soak it up at said pace. On the other hand, if a student is in a setting readily at attention to learning, then it lends itself to the psychic of the child to be ready to soak up the information.


Learning Begins at Home
My theory is that student’s learning capabilities are not only dependent on their learning environment, but in their living environment as well. A child who grows up in an environment that promotes learning is more responsive to learning. For examples, Asiatic cultures such as japan and china place emphasis on exhorting of learning of knowledge and personal self-improvement. The minimum is not their goal, above and beyond is their minimum. This is why with such dedicated households, the Asian population is said and seen to be on top of their academic progress. The American families, on the other hand, emphasize on how the individual child is special and not their end result. From that stems the mentality of a child that doesn’t exhort himself because he’s “special” just like everyone else. With that mentality, dropout rates are high, the number of student’s in college are low, and people really don’t seem to mind, because they’re still special. They don’t question the learning environment or the information they receive, they simply don’t inquire to learn. Brown suggests the opposite of this to be benefactor, inquiry based learning is not only enhancing to the learning process, it changes and builds character. Gillam also pitches in with this, stating that a copmplacentness does not benefit a student, rather that he should join in with class participation and strive for greater things than “just his best” when Gillam states “peer readers (or listeners) must draw inferences, make predictions, and construct meaning in a text rather than "receive meaning from it." But this won’t do because the child is complacent with what is at hand thanks to the psychology taught to him from birth. My proposition is to shift focus from improving schools to improving families, because even thought that is till important, education should start at home.


It Would Work, if We Co-Operated
This plan in practice will work no questions about it. Where it’s already implemented, children are succeeding, advancing head on over those who don’t have this mentality. The impact it has on the learning environment would e enormous, schools will no longer have to put as much focus on keeping children in schools, but put focus on providing materials to students. They will be willing and at attention to learning, and want information, not wanting out. The only thing holding this back from happening is conformity and lethargy of the American public and their resistance to change.


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Works Cited
Brown, Heather. "Walking into the Unknown: Inquiry-Based Learning Transforms the
English Classroom." English Journal 94.2 (2004): 43-48. Pdf file.

Downs, Douglas, and Elizabeth Wardle. "Teaching about Writing, Righting
Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning “First-Year Composition” as “Introduction
to Writing Studies”." CCC 58:4 (June 2007): 552-584. Pdf file.

Gillam, Alice M. "Research in the Classroom: Learning through Response." The
English Journal 79.1: 98-99. JSTOR. Web. 15 Sept. 2009.

Moll, Luis C., and Norma Gonzalez. "Lessons From Research With Language-Minority
Children." Journal of Reading Behaviors 26.4 (1994): 449-455. Print.

Hass, Christina, and Linda Flower. "Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the
Construction of meaning." College Composition and Communications 39.2
(1988): 167-183. STOR. Web. 23 Sept. 2009.