bman

"No child left behind". Anyone remember this? For those of us nearing 40, do you remember the early Reagan education initiatives.. how about the Clinton education initiatives? Well if you do not remember them dont fret over it...neither does anyone else including our lawmakers, educators, nor the majority of those under 30yrs of age today. Never fear, the 2008 campaigns are going to begin in full force very shortly and im quite sure that this next generation of bureuacrats will certainly bring this education issue up again.

For some reason Government feels that tossing money at most anything will fix it. This theory could be applied to some things, but education is not one of them. These programs were merely selling points to obtain voters as they sound good on the outside, but any reasonably intellligent person would see right through the thousands and thousands of pages of text and realize that it wont work.

As in any capitalistic society money drives the gears. When you are funding a large portion of any school system they become accustomed to this income. Now you tell the schools that their children, who's test scores have been steadily declining since 1980, that they must get their students scores back up to a national standard OR you're going to penalize them by taking away some of their money. How fair is this? Does anyone honestly believe that 99% of the teachers in America suddenly stopped caring about children beginning in the 1980's? I dont think so. The ever increasing statistics on drop-outs and high school students who cant pass basic reading and math tests are directly attributed to a huge decrease in our society's morals, ethics, values and most importantly, pride.

The schools have known this very simple fact: You cannot teach anyone anything that they dont WANT to learn. Yup, its true. Look at the prison system. That is probably the harshest form of education in existence today and guess what? It doesnt work. The prison system has a 44% relapse rate... 44%.. amazing.

Now a dilemma unfolds. They need the money to continue daily operations; What should they do? Simply fixed! Let's lower the standards required to get the children to pass! What a novel idea! This was a much larger mistake than any government education initiative ever could have been. Now begins the long slow boat ride up the proverbial shit creek. Each passing generation has now been graduated from High School with fewer real requirements and real knowledge than their previous generations as the government threatens to take more and more money away from schools who's children cannot read or write at a certain level. This has continued now for almost 20 years and guess what? Our National education average when being compared to other countries has fallen from #3 to number #17 by some studies, and as low as #22 on others.

Now when these children are in the work force will they expect the very same set of standards that we required of them while in school? Will the companies that employ them begin to lower their requirements simply because they cant find anybody to do the same job better and more efficiently? Will the companies give them the same pay with less performance expected of them? I think not.

The largest issue with our education system is that we as a people are suffering from lower morals, ethics, values, pride and common sense. People simply do not care about much of anything anymore except themselves. Why should they? There are so many government funded programs, aid and assistance available to them that there simply is no need to really learn much about anything if they dont have the personal drive, morals and common sense to do so.

This steady decline in common sense, morals, pride and IQ is quickly blinding the general population from the bullshit the government is handing us... this will allow the steady flow of bullshit from the government to continue its ebb and flow at an ever increasing rate and increase people's reliance upon more government intervention in our daily lives. Its already begun.. just look around and think about it for a bit.