Assimilation

As I watched to video about assimilation in preparation for Wednesday's lecture, one topic in the video really caught my eye. He was talking about the standards in schools. He showed an example of a script that every teacher for that grade level in the school district follows exactly on the same day. I didn't know there was this extreme of a strictly followed curriculum in some schools and it appalled me! Yes we have standards that we assimilate to for what knowledge teachers should be presenting to their students but does no one trust teachers enough to let them make their own decisions about how to teach a topic to their group of students. Using a script is a horrible way to teach kids because they all learn in different ways so a script will definitely not work for everyone.
I find it amazing that society is willing to trust doctors to tell us that we have cancer, need surgery, need a medication for the rest of our lives, but we can't even trust a teacher (who went to college for their career) to teach our children. Why is this? It just really bothers me that everyone blames the teachers for what is wrong with our education system. Maybe if the system actually gave teachers a chance, society would be proven wrong.
As far as assimilation, I think we need it to some degree. It provides structure and controls chaos in our society. I don't think we should force people conforming to a culture that isn't theirs so they 'fit in' better in our country. Yes people need to conform to some things in our society so they will not break a law or get in trouble but we do not need to take away their culture from them. This is what I think of when we assimilate but as Jim pointed out there are many things that we assimilate to. The example of us being late to class is one. But if we all just showed up to class whenever we wanted isn't that our fault and not the professors. We are responsible for our education and I think that if we care enough about our education we would show up to class on time. I don't know how many students would then actually show up to class but the only person they are really hurting is themselves. I think in school we have these standards that we assimilate to because people want us to do well so they set these expectations. The only question is how far do we assimilate?