Priorities

I just heard that the Education and Jobs Bill passed, no thanks to most of the republicans. Why is it that it seems to be OK to spend billions and billions on a war that shows no sign of ever ending, but spending money on education is considered wasteful? Guess what, we are already behind the rest of the industrialized world when it comes to education, and are falling farther behind every year. We are rapidly losing our position in regards to science, technology and business, but somehow spending less money on education makes sense. Really?  A general will beg for more money if they feel they are losing. A company will go out and pay millions for a CEO if they think it will improve the company. Our students are doing worse compared to the rest of the world, well then we should cut back on teachers, reduce classroom expenditures, increase class sizes and cut back on the number of days or hours students spend in class. Yeah that should fix it.

Oh, and if you have to pay big paychecks to get the best CEO's, basketball players, lawyers or doctors, what makes you think that a small paycheck will bring in the best teachers?

PS - teachers cannot fix this issue alone. We need parents, students, communities, businesses and government. If we all simply try to pass the buck off on the teachers this problem will never improve. They cannot do it all alone.

There are no quick or easy answers, but education in this country will never improve as long as it's looked at as some sort of wasteful luxury. We cannot write off educating the poor, because it's harder. We can continue to scrimp on education, but we'd better plan on spending more on prisons, and losing our edge over the competition from other nations, because without an educated involved population that's exactly where we are headed.