I think the problem we have with the education system is simply that it is undervalued in our country. We would rather police the world and legislate for minority factions than educate our children. Because of this, the funding that ought to be put into our children goes to things that should be lower priority.

In the part of California that we live, if you want your child to have a good education, you have to either choose a pricey private school (and have to put up with the fact that many of them are religious based- so you may not agree with that portion of the education, or may be discriminated against because you don’t fit the mold) , or petition to have your child sent to one of the few art schools that still offer a basic education in art, music, drama, - and in some cases even creative writing and computer tech! Because the budgets in those schools are also under stress- you will still need to enroll your child in non school sponsored extra curricular activities such as athletics, dance, music lessons, etc. Either way, it is a paperwork nightmare for the parents and financially stressful.

We live in an area where a basic education is just that- basic. Lacking. Individual teachers do their best- but you can only do so much without the support of your district. It’s maddening for me, as a parent, because I grew up in North Dakota, where my school district was third in the nation for both academics and arts. I had an amazing education- despite the fact that my parents were not well to do. When I went to college and took a part time job as a tutor, I was absolutely astounded at how many students enrolled in college didn’t have a basic understanding of grammar and sentence structure. I was supposed to help them write college level papers- when what they stood in need of was a fourth grade teacher!

If we truly mean to give the children of our nation an equal chance at an education and personal betterment, if we want the generation that comes after us to be comprised of better, stronger individuals, we need to put the money into it. We need to get our priorities in better order. If we don’t, we, as a nation will have regressed back into the situation we were in when our country was new. Only the privileged will be able to afford the education required to truly move them forward into the world, and not only the poor will suffer, but so will the bourgeois.

We need to drop the politics, and focus on our families. While any responsible parent can see the issue at hand and want more for their child, even the nation as a whole mustn’t hope to see their country run by idiots as they slip into old age! I’d love to see us pull out of or reduce the numbers of personell in the countries in which we are doing no marked good, and send that money home to our own children. I’m not against humanitarian work in other nations, but you have to take care of your own before you can take care of everyone else, and right now, we are failing our children.