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Clueless in America - New York Times

  2. smidirin
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One third of US high school students drop out!? Another third don't seem to fare much better? So that leaves a third to even have the potential to contribute to the future of the world's only superpower (at the moment anyway). A lot of you seem to be young and literate and motivated (and therefore presumably belonging to the latter group) please tell me this is not so!
And why isn't this an issue in the election campaign? Or is it, but most of the media is more interested in gender, race, money, style and who said what about who, when, where, how, etc.
smidirin

6 responses // Clueless in America - New York Times

  • I read this op-ed earlier and wasn't sure about posting it up here. It seems that Bob Herbert is sometimes a voice in the wilderness. I say this not because the things that he writes about aren't important, or worth listening to, but because it seems he isn't one of the newspaper's rockstar columnists, and, while he gets as many inches of column space, gets very little fanfare for it.

    This column, as his many others, is worth reading, for it points to a major problem this country will face and is facing in terms of the education of our youth. We can try very hard to change things now, but unfortunately we already have a lot of catching up to do with much of the rest of the world. Fast forward 15 or 20 years and we'll see that not just in terms of middle and high school education are we being surpassed, but also in technological and medical innovation. We should be much more assertive in making sure that everyone gets a chance at a superior education. We can't afford the alternative. We should be there to promote and invest in our greatest resource, our children. They are not just the carriers of our bloodlines, but the inheritors of the country we leave to them. They are invested because they can also make it better. But, shouldn't we make sure they have the tools to do it?

    I am not looking to put specific blame on the current administration, because it is not all their fault, but in the near future, it is not just the children that are being left behind.
    Craig_C
  • It should be an election year issue. There is no clearer way to put this: our K-12 education system is failing. Contrary to what Bush thinks, it's *not* the teachers' fault. Students are unmotivated and some of them have good reasons. Some of them come from homes where getting 3 meals a day is a problem. Some of them live in neighborhoods where they worry about staying alive.

    Other students are unmotivated because their parents don't care much about education anyway. Parents who don't push their kids to go to college mostly likely don't care how well they do in K-12 either.

    Parents defend their kids even when the teachers tell them that they're not handing in their homework, not passing exams, not attending class, etc... They think they are doing their kids a favor, but they're not. They're just rewarding their kids for *not* learning. Then they shouldn't be surprised if their kids subsequently drop out.

    For our education system to get better, we have to figure out how to solve the twin golems of poverty and apathetic anti-intellectualism.

    We have to change our culture and what we think about education. Snubbing teachers isn't cool. It only earns you a one-way ticket to an empty brain on poverty street.
    phoenix_fire999
  • Oh the math on this is easy. (Unemployment rate + sky rocketing inflation(which would equal less parents working harder for less money)) + (increased military spending + slashed education budgets) = the not so slow demise of the American mind. Ha, and I didn't even get into the environmental issues that phoenix touched upon...
    AreOh
  • Those are scary numbers, we need a massive education reform and quick! Maybe if we were not spending billions in Iraq our youngsters wouldn't be fucking idiots.
    rabidlemur
  • This doesn't surprise me in the least. For years you have heard that Americans can't find Vietnam on a map, or Iraq on a map, or name all fifty states.

    The thing is, from an aristocratic, arrogant standpoint, it's easier to lead an uninformed public than to manage an intellectual society. How many people got behind the war in Iraq out of fear and disinformation? How many of them forgot that Bill Clinton and the American armed forces had been keeping Saddam Hussein in check since he (Clinton) was sworn in in 1993?

    It's part of the reason why the establishment is pro media consolidation and anti Net Neutrality. The flow of information needs to be controlled.

    Maybe it's just a cynical view on my part? That or a sad fact society is being reigned in for the sake of power and control?
    jpfdeuce
  • Nope, not cynicism on your part at all. It's actually reality. The proof is in how little government spends on education. The proof is in how the "mainstream" media conducts itself and what they're lobbying against - net neutrality. The proof is in the Bush administrations brazen lies. You're not paranoid. You're right.
    phoenix_fire999

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