Priorities

We are flushing away trillions of dollars on an endless war. It is time to STOP the war and reinvest the money in our children and our future as a nation. What will it matter if we win this war (highly unlikely) if the payment is the education of the next generation, who will be unable to lead our country forward, because we let them down? This country is great at sounding off about how much we care about our children's education, but people always put their money where their priorities lie. So where are our priorities as a nation? Right now they appear to be fighting useless wars, and compensating rich corporations.

We have laws in place (NCLB) which claim that every child can reach a certain level of education: the same level of education. People forget that humans are not products on an assembly line, and even if they were, factories can't manage to make all their products perfect, every time (Toyota, etc...) We have turned education into a breeding ground of mediocrity. Everything is about passing some multiple choice test. We have a nation that is losing ground in science and technology. Soon we will be dependent upon other nations for our satellite communications, for medical research, for space exploration and all other basic scientific research. You cannot focus on making students great at passing a once a year test, and at the same time create good critical thinkers, and problem solvers. The time it takes to do the latter is great, but it produces people who can think, reason and invent. The former just creates people who are good at taking multiply choice tests. Personally, I think we need a lot more of the latter than the former.

It's time we put our money where our mouth is! Let's spend our money on education, research and development. If we are not careful we will become another USSR or Roman Empire. Let's get back to making this country great and stop trying to fix all the other countries.