Public Education is good for Vaccinations

2010-10-29T12:50:00.030-05:00

If you're like me, you may have just awoken this morning to the news that the school district in which you reside is now a failure*. At least according to the standards set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act. But how can that be you ask: how can my district which is in one of the wealthiest and best funded areas of the state be failing? Surely only poor inner city schools fail national standards. The answer is simple: the real reason why public education in America is failing is due to an over-liberalised agenda.

Let's examine the reason public education was formed in the first place. During the latter half of the 19th century, an arms race erupted in Europe between the major powers of France, Austria, Prussia, etc. The resulting military expansion led many politicians to realise the need for a basic level of education in order to promote patriotism and basic reading skills in the recruits. Hence, public education was born.

Granted, times have changed and the primary purpose of public education is no longer to channel eligible males into military service. However, the secondary goals of instilling patriotism towards the state and a basic level of reading requisite for civic participation still remains pertinent. (Which makes the debate about reciting the pledge of allegiance a really asinine question, but that's a separate rant.) Yet somehow, we being the "enlightened" people we are have collectively decided that advanced literature, European history, philosophy, phylogeny, physics, chemistry, calculus, trigonometry, etc ad nauseum are now requisite subjects for living a productive and civically engaging life.

If you doubt that education is important for instilling patriotism, just look at the mess Europe is in right now with their immigration problem and the lack of assimilation. If you believe that the aforementioned advanced subjects are useful for life, I challenge you to find the last time you actually directly utilised any of those subjects. And no, I don't think you've used calculus to derive the acceleration of your vehicle as a function of its velocity over time... So if the originating goals of education are so important for a civil society, and the appended goals seem so unimportant, why do we now stress the latter rather than the prior? No, we are not all enlightened enough to believe that living the 'life of the mind' is the key to eternal happiness. The real reason is because we all now believe that college is the only route to success; and the only ticket into college is by excelling at all those accessory subjects. And therein lies the problem with the American education system: the belief that everyone must go to college to achieve a middle class (or better) status in society.

If we examine the 1950s and 60s, where the average automotive industry worker could make more than enough to comfortably support a family, we know that a bachelor's wasn't always necessary for a happy life. Unfortunately, if we look at trends of the 21st century, we start to notice that even a bachelor's isn't enough to find a career suitable for a comfortable lifestyle. In fact, more often than not, even a PhD can't find a well-paid career without completing one, or even two post-doctroal fellowships. This is because education like any other construct follows the laws of supply and demand. As the supply of people with bachelor's go up, the value of the BA/BS inevitably comes down. So more and more people stay in school longer to earn advanced degrees; but by the time they finish, they discover that even the value of their PhDs 4-8 years in the making has deflated.

This vicious cycle inevitably feeds back to our public education system. Since finite number of colleges have a finite student capacity, the competition to assure a seat in college becomes incredibly intense. For the past few years now, Universities across the nation have experienced record numbers of applicants as acceptance rates plummeted. Because of the ferocious competition and insatiable demand for post-secondary educations, the burden falls towards the public education system to train pupils who are more and more qualified. This is a task that the public education system was never meant to handle; as resources become stretched in order to accommodate this trend for overachievement, more and more schools will inevitably fall short of expectations.

The current demands placed on the public education systems are completely unrealistic. We are both asking it to do too much, and asking it to fuel a cycle that is unsustainable and ultimately dangerous. The only solution is to have a change in philosophy about education. We as a society must stop instilling the notion that only students with post-secondary degrees can be successful. An expansion of the industrial worker population with high school diplomas would not only alleviate the strain placed on our public education system, it would also help boost the industrial sector of the United States which has soured compared to our international competitors. There is no reason why the American dream of the 50s and 60s must require a bachelor's degree.

A world full of academics would be extraordinarily ineffective. And at the risk of sounding calloused, the world does need its trench diggers. A drastic shift in perception of public education towards preparing students capable of joining the labor force and having a strong sense of civic duty (i.e. patriotism) is what is required in this country. Unfortunately, in the meantime, I can feel a storm brewing as parents in my school district debate why they're still keeping their tenth grader in a school that still hasn't taught them multi-variable integrals, or why our average SAT scoring percentiles is 1% lower than the neighbouring district's.

*As of Oct 2010, over 50% of school districts in Illinois is now considered non-compliant with the standards set forth by the NCLB Act based on standardised test results administered to students K-12.

Voting: Privilege or Right?

2010-10-28T22:45:00.028-05:00

When I turned 18, wisdom pills were noticeably missing from my pile of presents. Yet, that seems to be the assumption voting eligibility relies on in this country: once you turn 18, you now posses the wisdom to vote and partake in our democratic system. Even if we ignore the fact that there are many intelligent teens out there who are more politically aware than your average adult, having age and citizenship be the only determining factors of voting eligibility feels completely arbitrary.

The cornerstone of democracy is a mutual dependency formed between the citizens of a state and its government; whereupon the citizens depend on the state for protection both physical and commercial, and the state in turn depends upon the citizens for support both financial and civic. Turning 18 does not represent a new relationship between the state and the citizen. Which is to say, a legal adult shares the same dependence to the state as a 17 year old or a 4 year old. Unless that 18 year old now contributes financially or in civics (mil/pub service) to the state, that relationship also remains unchanged from the 17 year old. So again, I ask what makes turning 18 such a magical event that should grant them the privilege of voting?

How does the 40 year old surviving off welfare for half his life have more at stake in the state than the 17 year old? How does the jobless 20 year old living at home with his parents have more at stake in the state than the 15 year old? The answer is they don't, and yet they are given a say in government whereas the 17 or 15 year old don't. No matter where you are in life, your dependence on the state will remain unchanged; however, the state's dependence upon you is always subject to change based on your tangible contributions. I believe it is this latter relationship that should be the determinant for voting eligibility.

A mutually vested interest between the state and the citizen would produce the most responsible voter. I do not believe that becoming a legal adult should be a criterion for voter eligibility, nor do I believe in the antiquated requirement of being a land-owning male. I do believe that being a tax-paying individual should be the requirement for voting. If you paid income or property taxes that tax year, even if you received 99% of it back during tax returns, you are a much more qualified and eligible voter than someone because you have a much stronger mutual relationship with your government. That stronger relationship would influence you to be less self-interested in exercising your political power. To be frank, if you aren't paying money into the pot, you have very little right to dictate where the money is in turn used- you wouldn't listen to a stranger give you advice about how to spend your family's savings would you?

Thoughts of a F.O.B.

Public Education is good for Vaccinations

Voting: Privilege or Right?