The Race (?) to the Presidency

And the Presidential race is on! How stupid is it that the potential Presidential candidates are already holding televised debates, challenging each other, and hoping to make the other candidates look stupid. I think they all look stupid, for a couple of reasons.

First, there are several current officeholders in the race - governors, congressmen, etc. If they have to campaign nonstop for the next 14 months, who is doing their job? They can't possibly do justice to what they were elected to do—govern. I think campaigning has become a full time, year-round job. Who cares about passing laws, or governing the country, all they have to do is campaign from the time they are first elected until they finally die. Job description—no governing needed.

Second, with today's technology, a candidate could announce his or her candidacy a month before the election and still become well known enough to get elected. In fact, that might not be a bad idea. By that time, all the candidates who started campaigning early would be nothing but noise. We would have heard their ideas, or lack of ideas, a million times, and have gotten so bored with their rhetoric that most of the electorate would have shut their ears and eyes to them. Someone who comes in just before election day would get noticed a lot, especially if they had at least one new idea.

Where has common sense gone? And what is wrong with the American people that we put up with such idiocy?

Public Education

We can all lament how public education isn't what it used to be—it isn't. We can say that the parents need to be more involved with the schools; that the teachers need to use more discipline; and that the schools need more money to keep up with the latest technology. But no matter how many times, or how many ways, we say it, it isn't going to happen.

A lot of parents who care about their children's education are using vouchers to send their kids to private schools. This takes dollars away from the public schools, leaving poor schools for poor kids. A lot of kids, and not just the poorer ones, come from families who don't care whether or not their children get qualified instruction, and this is not going to change just because they are told they must take a greater interest in the child's education.

The United States no longer ranks first, or even second or third, in the quality of the education provided to its students. China is ranked tops in reading, math, and science; and Finland, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and New Zealand all rank better than the U.S. I don't know the answer to make our system better, and I certainly can't suggest how to make it the best in the world.

I do know that we need to look at innovative ideas for keeping kids in school, for keeping them interested in learning, so that we may once more become a country who emphasizes education. I believe that the answer does not involve throwing more money at the problem, or reducing Thomas Jefferson's contribution to the founding of this nation to a footnote. We need to look at how teachers are trained, how effective they are in teaching (and not just in "teaching to a test"),  the hours students spend in school, maybe even year-round classes. Making our schools better will not be an easy sell to people in the U.S., but not making our schools better will have an even worse outcome. Jobs will continue to move overseas as companies want to hire the best and brightest; and we will have increasing numbers of people on welfare roles as these jobs are lost. What should we do? I don't know. But I think a good start would be to vow to make our public school system once more the best in the world, and to look for people who can help do this.