EDUCATION REFORM IS NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN

NOT IF THE REPUBLICANS HAVE A SAY ON IT

It used to be that America turned out the highest number of college graduates of any industrialized nation in the world. We ranked number one and now it is gone to 9^th place. Other countries like South Korea, Finland and Singapore value the education of its citizenry more than we do.

It seems that there is a “Catch 22” kind of system all in place to defeat any type of improvement or reform in education. Why is this happening to us? The cost of a college education has gone up not commensurate with the rise in the cost of living or the income of Americans.

We hear the Republicans say time and time again that public education is faltering, that it is ineffective, that we are wasting our money; our taxes are evaporating when we use them in education…and you know what? They are right…but only because they want it that way. Their contempt for public education is such that they have set up these pervasive and self-defeating initiatives designed for the express purpose of discrediting public education and making it fail. A good example is “No child left behind”. Republicans believe that there should be no public education, no health care, no social security, no medicare because that is SOCIALISM.

The indications are there: we pay our teachers lousy salaries, overcrowd their classrooms and squander our resources when it comes to public education. Teaching is not a career that most college graduates want to pursue because it is low pay with horrible working conditions. We have also seen how any attempts by teachers to better their lot have been torpedoed by Republicans. Their total repulsion for teachers’ unions is legendary.

But there is one more aspect to this than meets the eye; and it is simply that Republicans and Tea Baggers have a total contempt for any intellectual endeavor, the absence of value in meritocracy and the way some of these Republican politicians try to ingratiate themselves by showing how common and uneducated they are is simply appalling…does George W. Bush and Sarah Palin remind you of this?