But then, when it comes to educating the kids, you know providing them them classrooms with a ratio between pupil and teacher that permits conversation, communication the size of kids per teacher grows and grows.
When it comes to providing the kids with curriculum that encourages learning, permits introspection, allows for fact to reign over fiction, the cuts in almost every state budget deny most school districts to produce manure and garbage.
The nation's governors and states school chiefs will propose standards Wednesday for what students should learn in English and math from kindergarten through high school. This so called "blueprint"aims to replace a hodgepodge of state benchmarks with common standards.
Sounds good, but if you follow State news broadcasts, you have to wonder exactly how many schools will available and how many students will be enrolled, and how many teachers will be around to apply the "blueprint".
As the news of the education "mavens" was announced the Kansas City Missouri school board is facing a stark choice: close nearly half its public schools or face a potential bankruptcy.
The state of California in trying to find some cuts to a bleeding budget and has cut funds for higher education as well as telling all the municipalities in the state, cut, cut, cut! Make your classroom swell in size, no extra-curricular activities, and fire those damn teachers who are making too much money.
The state of Utah is deciding if the school week should be reduced from 5 days to 4. And one Utah Congressperson want to delete 12th grade.
We bailed out Wall Street, money was found because we were told that if wall street failed Main Street would sink, dive to the bottom of the sea, and be destroyed. The foundation of America rested on our financial institutions.
So funding education with the next generation and the generation after them, a potential for some kind of foundation to keep America thriving and vibrant is not worth saving? Do kindergarten kids not help the bottom line? Do middle school kids not provide enough capital to provide CEO's with well earned bonus money? Are high school students expensive cogs, too expensive to pay and cheap enough to import from overseas?
When both my kids were in elementary school my wife and I stood in line, slept in line stayed in line for a week, so our kids could be part of a new educational plan for the city of Pittsburgh. We were part of a lottery, a lottery to enroll our kids in a magnet school, which not only hired top rated teachers, provided extra curricular activity, provided an integrated classroom but said our kids are our future and we want to treat them right.
Both kids managed to complete their magnet programs and enter high school successfully. Both kids had the advantage of a school board supported by a city, encouraged by a state to plant a seed for the foundation for the future.
Lip service is such a media tactic. Say its for the kids, say its God's wishes. Tell us how valuable the kids are. But find ways to educate them so they learn, so they like learning, so they something to learn, and suddenly the priority plops and disappears.
I guess there is a bottom line for everything and everyone! i just don't get it?
No comments :
Post a Comment