For copious reasons (e.g. time, workload, simplicity, and effectiveness) this blog post will be almost a replica of the notes I took from the reading No Time to Lose: Why America Needs an Education Amendment to the US Constitution to Improve Public Education. Before I begin, I need to preface this post. I read the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) publishing very emblazoned at some points. Therefore, some parts of the post may be slightly inarticulate and rely on simple and rather uneducated words. (words that I myself might not speak aloud) ☺
Key: Q=question S=statement/comment
Pg. 4-Low income/minority funding disparities
-Why is America so afraid of opportunity for all of its citizens? I’m not even arguing for a flat world, it’s for your own people. It’s for you.
-Political race: Political race is what Lani Giuner and Gerald Torres refer to as the act of enlisting race to fight injustices. Low income whites and minorities as a whole are citied together in political race because low income whites are raced as black or brown, that is, in some instances low income people suffer the same injustices minorities face.
Q-Are the Federal governments in countries out performing us (with better education rankings), such as China and India investing more money per pupil? I suspect so.
Q-I wonder if we need another Cold War to kick people into gear to realize that education is an urgent matter.
Q-If you can have state take-overs of failing schools and school districts, why can’t you have federal take-overs of failing states. Then again, would that mean almost every state would be taken over?
Pg. 9-“In the United States today, most students in doctoral and post-doctoral programs in the fields of engineering and mathematics are ‘foreign nations’…if this trend continues, the US could have…a problematic over-reliance on other nations for technical know-how.”
-The prescience of this quote is proven in the Deep Horizon oil disaster. Deep-sea technology is not available in the US, it’s only available in five countries (e.g. China, Russia, Japan) I first heard about this from an official from the U.S. Coast Guard on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, but here’s a link to an online article about technology the US does not have that more advanced countries do: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-real-reason-america-refused-international-help-on-the-oil-spill-2010-6
S-Social Security will not be worth sh—squat. Education is linked to the economy. The economy is linked to Social Security. Therefore by transitive property education is linked to Social Security. If we’re sowing generations of uneducated citizens our economy will reap the costs. Social Security will not be non-exist because of the quantity of baby boomers; Social Security will be non-existent because of the quality of education baby boomers received compared to what we’re offering today.
S-You pay now or you pay. Invest in education now. I guarantee you you’ll be covering more than principal if we postpone this even longer.
S-If this comes back to bite me in the butt 10, 20, 30 years from now or even tomorrow…I don’t care: Socialism=highest democracy. I’m not arguing for complete socialism, some things just don’t need micromanaging. However, I am a proponent of bigger government. Who exactly do I hold accountable when I have problems of this magnitude. Clearly districts, counties, parishes, and states aren’t getting the job done, but whom within those states bears liability? If the Federal government took a larger roll we’d have one place to look instead of many. Besides, people feel like they have more at stake when the Federal government gets involved; the YOU become WE.
Pg. 15-That’s why people bi—h (complain) about No Child Left Behind, it’s not necessarily that the concept (or all of it) is bad, but nothing’s funded. I can’t make something out of nothing.
S-Lawmakers, “movers, and shakers” disassociate themselves and their interests (what’s at stake) from those most hurt.
-Many people who have the “power” to do something on a grand scale block themselves in and others out with an US/THEM mentality. Being human is not enough. It’s quite sad that the root of the word ‘political’ mean people, too many of us forget that.
Pg. 19-What are they doing? I know I’m not the only one with access to these numbers! Check out the Cold War period in these graphs. I’m a history person, I look for tends and patterns and try to find explanations within historical context.
Pg. 26-I wrote about Cold War education in my final semester one history paper.
Pg. 26-What I say on page 15 about NCLB?
Pg. 32-You know why an education amendment just might work in the long run? Who’s bi—ching (wanting to repeal) the Social Security Act—not that many people. Once people realize an education amendment is for the greater good (for them) they’ll buy into it like an inside trader.
At the end of No Time to Lose, current and past court cases are discussed. Although I think power exists in the judicial system and that this is one of the, if the only, first line of offense to redress grievances. However, a judicial order is not the same as a law. This is a nation wide problem. It won’t get solved with a new policy or renewal of energy once every four to eight years. Something, somehow has to make education reform more stable, effective, and sustainable. Our future is at risk.
-Radical.
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