Dropout of Math, Science Study a Mistake
Have you seen “Shrek”? It’s the Dreamworks animated movie that won a whole slug of awards - including an Oscar - in 2001. And I’m not asking just because I’m a political columnist that regularly criticizes the Bush/Cheney White House and the movie just happens to have an ogre and a jackass in it.
No, I wonder if you thought about the time you spent sitting down watching the film. You know, the time it took you to physically watch “Shrek.” After all, you’re a grownup with better things to do. Maybe you and your kids watched it together so you have decided that it was time well spent.
Well, did you know that while you watched “Shrek,” we spent $9 million on the war in Iraq? Yep, the Seattle Times confirms that we spend $100,000 a minute on the war. Actually, we don’t, our grandchildren do. And that’s pretty impressive considering a lot of us don’t even have grandchildren yet!
At the rate those grandchildren of ours keep spending, they won’t have to worry about renting “Shrek”; they won’t be able to afford it.
If we had just watched “Shrek” before we invaded Iraq; if we had just started that war 90 minutes later, our grandchildren would have an extra $9 million to spend right now seeing how their parents do at math and science when compared with the rest of the world. Yep, those reckless grandkids’ parents (also known as our children) would have the money necessary to participate in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) which is testing the world’s young people and their ability to do math and science.
But no, the United States dropped out of the study earlier this month. The official reason given by Mark Schneider, the commissioner for the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, was that they “looked at the countries who are participating, our scarce resources,” meaning money, “and our overextended staff, and we decided to give it a pass.”
Many math and science education experts believe that’s a big mistake; that we can’t afford to give it a pass, especially considering how poorly our children did last time. A recent Newsweek article concurs, “In the past American results have been shockingly poor.” In fact, the article continues, “In the last survey, taken in 1995, students from only two countries - Cyprus and South Africa - scored lower than U.S. school kids.”
George W. Bush speaks like he understands the problem. He said, “We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations.” This gets a little tougher to do, you’ve got to admit, when we withdraw from the tests that evaluate our success with respect to those other nations.
Unfortunately for our children the president’s actions don’t match his words.
A white paper released by the Council of Great City Schools states that “The U.S. Department of Education, whose overall funding was reduced by Congress for the first time in a decade in the recent fiscal year 2006 funding bill, was cut by an additional $3.1 billion in President Bush’s proposal for 2007.” That cut is about what our grandchildren spend in Iraq in two weeks (or while watching “Shrek” 344 times).
Among the programs the president wants cut is the entire Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) block-grant, the federal government’s primary source of funding for school technology, with a price tag of only $275 million. Jeepers, that’s like watching “Shrek” about 30 times!
The really shortsighted thing about our grandchildren investing so much money in the Iraq war and neglecting education is that instead of raising taxes on the wealthiest of their grandparents to pay for it; they’ve foolishly borrowed the money from other nations. You know other nations - but not Cyprus and South Africa - no, they’ll have to pay back nations that kick their butts in math and science.
Stupid kids! When those yet unborn grandchildren of ours try to pay back their rapidly growing war debt, they won’t have the education they need to earn the money to even come close.
Pat LaMarche of Yarmouth is the author of “Left Out In America: the state of homelessness in the United States.” She can be contacted at PatLaMarche@hotmail.com.
© 2007 Bangor Daily News
“[The natural right to be free of the debts of a previous generation is] a salutary curb on the spirit of war and indebtment, which, since the modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813.
Sgt. Pepper was wrong, it’s NOT getting better all the time. (It CAN get worse.)
Didn’t you hear? When Jesus comes back, all debt will be absolved.
didn’t you hear? jesus has a new philosophy. love the rich, burden the poor, and to hell with the environment.
The other day I watched “Easy Rider” yet again. We blew it. How true. How pathetic. How sad, how very sad.
Very Bush: Just cancel the study so the results need never be known. Doesn’t this sound just like the way ever other “inconvenient truth” is handled by this administration; that is when they can’t get some PR expert to otherwise muddy the waters with enough dis-information to make 22-30% think the decider is doing a damned good job?
Thank goodness by the time our grandchildren are burdened with this inevitable scenario, the Chinese will have demanded payment of the loans, totalling $5,000.00 per minute in interest. Which of course will be payable in US factories and real estate. So the chances are, by then the Chinese will be running the education system. Math class before the sweatshop…
For more insight into this situation, see Zeitgeist at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331
It may be the most important and the most frightening movie you will ever see.
I don’t know if we should bash Bush on this one, he did push for the No Child Left Behind program, whch is fairly expensve for school districts and the president is only establishing priorities. We shouldn’t put our tax dollars into every program that comes along.
Very briefly, The No Child Left Behind program works like this. School districts HAVE to purchase the required materials for the program and the testing or they will lose some of their federal funding. It is a little like a payoff to the mob.___ Buy or else. The teachers I’ve spoken to about the program, say the required and expensive materials are absolutely worthless junk! Well, you know how teachers can be when they are forced into programs that aren’t exactly the way they’d do it.
Oh, one more little item. The company who furnishes the No Child Left Behind materials, is owned by GWBs mommy, his uncle and a brother. Swell,___ and Bush gets away with it, the press doesn’t cover it and congress approved the billions of dollars a year program.___ Puke time.
Siouxrose, I seem to have missed you for awhile! Liked your comment on how things get handled by this administration. It is like living in Alice & Wonderland, everything is misstated, buried, or secret. Maybe GWB doesn`t even know what reality is as poppa or someone else always got him out of any problem. Perhaps one has to struggle with their own debts before it has any meaning, but he runs the country like a game of monopoly.
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns–we are seeing the scene develope and our kids and grandkids will pay the price. I hate to think about how that might play out.
We have seen the downside to right wing government in a major way the last 6 1/2 years. People remember all this criminality and then claiming executive privilege. They remember Leave Every Child Behind and may the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else.
Bush did more to damage the Republican party then anyone since Nixon. He always admired Nixon, now he can have his legacy too.
Hi KERNEL: I was traveling. I don’t have a laptop computer, so I am at the mercy of libraries or friends’ computers when “on the road.” It’s nice to be missed (LOL)! Now I am back… (till my next orbit calls.)
Reading story after story here on Common Dreams and other sites, isn’t living in the USA begining to feel like riding on a rollercoaster, when you’re looking all around from the top, for that brief second, before plunging down in freefall? It has a temporary stillness, with just a second to see the whole picture, right before falling.
I see so many conservatives play down problems we’re facing, as if it will all work out because it always does, and I don’t see how they square that attitude with stories like this one.
Bush’s legacy; No Child Left A Dime.
I think the worst aspect of NCLB is the manipulatory way it defines cirriculum, coupled with the fact that it supposes that all children’s progress can be based on test results. As I understnd it, school districts must maintain test scores within range to receive federal funds. Administrators push their teachers to stress testing. That is to say, not only are key elements of a child’s general understanding of life and society left completely out of this cirriculum, but the atmosphere in classrooms has changed as well. For decades the ed. system has thwarted personal growth by denying our children the opportunity to socialize or interact with their peers, choosing instead silence and strict adherence to the rules. But now, even during the militarized dictation of information, it is focused on memorizing test questions instead of actual learning…
I did not know W had a personal stake in the sales of the materials but of course, that doesn’t surprise me in the least.
United Slaves of America, time for revolt is near…
I did not know W had a personal stake in the sales of the materials but of course, that doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Yep, well the family does. They also make tons of money off war profitting and have for four generations beginning with WW1. Grandaddy Prescott secretly bankrolled Hitler during WW2. Old Daddy George was the first to use depleted uranium weapons and JR upped him one by using even more. So Iraq is poisoned for centuries.
And this fine upstanding Robber Baron clan can’t have America’s public schools churning out smart thinking individuals. They have to stay dumb and mindlessly entertained to insure enough cannon fodder for the future. Besides we’ll be sold to China before the grandkiddies get an idea of the “good life” so don’t worry, keep shopping!
If this government wanted our public schools to succeed they would. But then where would that leave white rich Rethuglican brats in private schools?
MARCTILESTON: Good points; and in such an unnatural setting we wonder why a percentage of children must be given drugs to “adapt.” There is a war against nature and that which is natural in ourselves, it breeds contempt on all levels, even some we can’t discern. Between war, fiscal debt and global warming, some of the understanding of the Indigenous will need to be embraced if any of us expect to survive and learn to live in relative harmony with nature and her systems once again. Money means nothing when there is neither rain nor food.
There is much wisdom in this article. Why is it that we just don’t get the fact that Mr. Bush, and his supporters, are fighting this war on CREDIT, and leaving our grandchildren and maybe even their grandchildren with the burden of paying for this war? And, why don’t we understand that it is the REPUBLICANS that are turning this great nation into a nation swamped in debt to other nations, the highest debtor nation in the world?!
See this link:
http://www.lafn.org/politics/gvdc/Natl_Debt_Chart.html
If you look at this site, you can see that it is/has been the Republicans, starting with Reagan, that are responsible for the vast increase in our debt, Bush 1, and now this warmonger of president continues on the same course, but in ever increasing amounts. If you do not believe this National Debt is affecting our financial well being, consider:
1. It is, in part, responsible for the loss of value of the US dollar against other world currencies, especially the European Euro; 45+% in only the last five years.
2. Other nations fleeing from the US dollar as a hedge currency hasten the decline in value.
3. Potential increase in the price of oil when oil producing countries start pricing oil in Euros, rather than dollars. (A couple have already done so, and others are considering doing so.)
4. Some holders of our national debt are NOT our friends, China for example, and if they start calling in the debt, it could cause financial ruin for this nation.
5. And, finally, leaving our grandchildren’s future mortgaged because of the folly of this generation.
“We owe Japan $714.9 billion; China, $191.1 billion; the United
Kingdom, $152.5 billion; the Caribbean Banking Center, $76.2 billion;
Korea, $69.3 billion; OPEC nations, and we wonder by gasoline is so
high, OPEC nations, we have borrowed as a Nation $66.6 billion from
them. The list goes on and on. In fact, we have borrowed, this
administration has borrowed more money from foreign governments and
foreign banks in less than 5 years than the previous 42 Presidents
combined…”
You can see more at:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=725796