As a student who has recently experienced America's woeful educational system firsthand, I am profoundly indignant at the place the issue of education holds in national politics.
Increasing funding for education is one issue which almost everyone agrees to, irrespective of party affiliation. No one denies that our children are getting a truly sub-par education, and there is little question that the decline in the quality of education in the past few decades is at least partly responsible for our current economic troubles. Anywhere from 10 to 25% of teenagers don't even reach the end of high school before leaving school. American students finish consistently at the bottom of the list of developing countries in terms of math, science, geography and global awareness. A study by National Geographic found that over 50% of young people cannot name Sudan as being an African country, even though it is the largest country on that continent and the location of this century's worst genocide.
No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration's disastrous program, is extraordinarily detrimental to the system. The act uses stacks of standardized tests to identify the schools which perform well and those which perform badly. They then cut funding for the latter, which usually tend to be the ones most in need of aid in the first place.
Unfortunately, any congressman who votes against the No Child Left Behind act will never hear the end of it. How can you do such a thing? They will say, you are an evil person to leave our children behind!
And in this way our children are becoming the political tools of Washington, their cause exploited for votes and then forgotten about until the next election. This is unacceptable in America, a country which thinks of itself as a land of opportunity. State by state we have to rethink our system: boosting teacher salaries, renovating run-down buildings, expanding important programs such as foreign language and science while scaling back the standardized tests which waste time and turn kids against school.
Barack Obama has been going through a tough few weeks. He has lost his message of hope as he gets caught up in the negative political scene that is Washington. Obama is in a rut, and needs to pull himself out by identifying a consensus issue which must be addressed. He should unify the country around reforming our education system. My generation is growing up cynical and uninformed, and Barack Obama is in a position to change this.
Our future is at stake. Let's quit the hollow rhetoric and solve the problem.
Increasing funding for education is one issue which almost everyone agrees to, irrespective of party affiliation. No one denies that our children are getting a truly sub-par education, and there is little question that the decline in the quality of education in the past few decades is at least partly responsible for our current economic troubles. Anywhere from 10 to 25% of teenagers don't even reach the end of high school before leaving school. American students finish consistently at the bottom of the list of developing countries in terms of math, science, geography and global awareness. A study by National Geographic found that over 50% of young people cannot name Sudan as being an African country, even though it is the largest country on that continent and the location of this century's worst genocide.
No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration's disastrous program, is extraordinarily detrimental to the system. The act uses stacks of standardized tests to identify the schools which perform well and those which perform badly. They then cut funding for the latter, which usually tend to be the ones most in need of aid in the first place.
Unfortunately, any congressman who votes against the No Child Left Behind act will never hear the end of it. How can you do such a thing? They will say, you are an evil person to leave our children behind!
And in this way our children are becoming the political tools of Washington, their cause exploited for votes and then forgotten about until the next election. This is unacceptable in America, a country which thinks of itself as a land of opportunity. State by state we have to rethink our system: boosting teacher salaries, renovating run-down buildings, expanding important programs such as foreign language and science while scaling back the standardized tests which waste time and turn kids against school.
Barack Obama has been going through a tough few weeks. He has lost his message of hope as he gets caught up in the negative political scene that is Washington. Obama is in a rut, and needs to pull himself out by identifying a consensus issue which must be addressed. He should unify the country around reforming our education system. My generation is growing up cynical and uninformed, and Barack Obama is in a position to change this.
Our future is at stake. Let's quit the hollow rhetoric and solve the problem.
"What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child."
--George Bernard Shaw
--George Bernard Shaw
3 comments:
I completely concur. Our government needs to wake up before the next generation of students enter school.
I agree with all the solutions that you put forward to solve this problem, but we also need to look beyond the classic liberal/conservative splits on this issue
As you said education should be a bipartisan topic, which is why we shouldn't be afraid to take conservative ideas as well. Here's one - charter schools. These schools if run properly can have a drastic impact on student's lives, instilling a love for learning, discipline, and hard work.
Another technically "conservative" idea that you left out is confronting teacher's unions. These organizations which are huge supporters of the Democratic Party, hence the liberal fear of confronting them allow education to stagnate by keeping bad teachers in tenure and resisting change
We are not in a position to "take on the teacher unions". The first step is to create incentives for bright young people to become teachers. Many of these "bad teachers" who cause "stagnation" are the result of decades of poor salaries, few benefits and tough conditions.
Rather than go after the teachers, let's appreciate them for the public servants that they are. We should reward, not penalize them. Once we have a pool from which to choose, then we can begin to weed out the bad ones. In the meantime, confronting the unions will only cause problems.
-The Young Sentinel
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