Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know about statewide budget cuts in Florida, and everywhere else. Explain to me why those budget cuts are hitting schools as hard as they are hitting other areas. Shouldn't schools be insulated, at least somewhat, from the economy?
Perhaps that's why Americans do not have confidence in our place in the world. We know -- because we hear it on the news all the time -- that our schools are slipping. With each passing year, kids are getting less in the way of education, arts and physical activity.
By the time they get to undergrad, it's too late to fix the problem. Many undergraduate programs are reduced to video presentations in huge classes, or conducted online, with minimal little direct contact or feedback. And that was before the undergrad institutions faced budget cuts!
Why then are public schools suffering in the budget crunch? Can't something else suffer disproportionately?
In Jacksonville, school money has taken a back seat for a long time -- all the way in the back of the bus -- to the Sheriff's office. We have a terribly high murder rate, so the solution is more officers, and groups of citizens writing reports about why this is happening to us.
When I say "solution" I mean short term solution. More officers make us feel safer. Maybe, just maybe, it slows down the murder rate while we finish our reports. It's just a band aid, though. The real culprit is the Duval County school system, with a high school dropout rate around 50%. That's not a new statistic. Things have been bad in this county (and Dade) for a long long time. Think maybe them chickens are comin' home to roost and showing up in the crime stats?
Maybe cleaning up education (see, e.g., obliterating the FCAT, the prep for which bores students to tears) would produce more long term benefits in the crime statistics. But the current slate of politicians won't be around for that. Won't get credit for it. Band aids, on the other hand, sound really good on t.v. Plus, we're all scared of crime. If we're scared, we want it fixed. Now! Bad education? That's kiiinnddda scary, but it's a slow kind of scary. We can deal with it later.
We'll delay production of bright, creative and motivated citizens, because we're skeeered of black people with guns. Who's fault is that?
Maybe we ought to put ourselves in position to allow the U.S. to maintain (or re-achieve, depending on your viewpoint) its place in the world. Hell, right now we can't even make a decent car.
Meanwhile the feds are giving money to banks for taking unnecessary risks, to bail out people who took unnecessary risks with their homes. And a slice of the pie goes to the car manufacturers -- anyone who was born in the 70s or later could see this comin'. How is any of that money going to work its way back into the educational system?
Soon we'll be too dumb to care. And that, of course, is when we'll get the money. Because the money goes to the dumb and the greedy.
Imagine how pissed I would be if I actually had kids!
