Bad Health and Education?

There is a disturbing trend that developed in the 90's that is still alive and well here in 2008. The trend I speak of is the trend of public schools looking to companies like Coke and Pepsi to make up for budget shortfalls within school districts. How did we get to the point in this nation where Coke and Pepsi are keeping portions of the public education system going? It makes me sick to my stomach when I think about Coke and Pepsi officials telling a school district that to recieve their help, the school district must meet a quota in regards to the total number of vending machines present in schools and the amount of soda they sell. Does this make any sense to anybody? We are saying as a country, "we won't pay more taxes to support schools, we'd rather let soft drink and candy companies ruin the future health of our children because they are contributing enough money to barely keep schools running!" To me this is not only sad, it's ridiculous, schools shouldn't have to sacrifice the health of their students to keep from shutting down. I'm not blaming Coke or Pepsi either, they are offering some help. But their products don't help anyone health wise, they only do damage.

My high school, Glencoe, which is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, surfs in and out of debt each year. They start each school year in debt, get out of debt during the school year thanks to Coke, but are back in debt by the summer due to the lack of funding that is present across the U.S. This is not the way things should be or have to be, we as a nation are choosing for things to be this way. How can anyone believe that our country doesn't have the funds to make a public education system not only work, but have an excess of funds? I know that we have the time, energy, money, intelligence, etc... as a country to find a solution to fix the declining state of education. But the only way that this is going to happen is if the American public makes it happen. We need to insist that the current presidential candidates make a clear concise statement as to how they plan to help public education. We must contact senators and any other local officials that can help make this issue a national one. Basically, those of us who want to see changes made within our public education system have to make our voices heard as often as possible. Use blogs, letters, e-mails, and any other ways that you can think of to make it clear that our nation's public is not satisfied with the current public education system. Please let your voices be heard, because if we don't start soon, who knows how bad things are going to get.

Just Let Them Play!!!!!!!

I want to address an issue regarding funding for our education system that I haven't brought up yet and doesn't get as much attention as it needs. The lack of funding for our public school system in this country has become such an issue that sports programs at a number of high schools are either being cut down in size or being cut altogether. This is a very disturbing trend in our country that began in some of the smaller districts, but has now begun to affect even large school districts in big towns and cities. Some of my fondest memories from high school are from me either competing in or attending school sporting events. When you begin to take the fun areas out of school you begin to make school seem like a job. Teenagers already have neough going on in their lives to make school seem like a job. What gets me, is that the adults in the government and education system that decide to underfund schools and cut these sports programs were at one point teenagers who loved playing and watching high school sports themselves. How can adults become so far removed from their own lives that they don't realize they are forcing a generation of teenage students to endure a schooling process that in now way resembles the one that hey themselves have great memories of.

With other areas of the schooling process like the school band and art programs being cut from budgets, it's time for parents and adults across out country to take a stand. The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and other portions of our public schooling system are in need of some serious reform if our country is going to move and improve the current state of our education system. Standardized testing should not be such a huge concern and point of emphasis, that funding the testing process eliminates other portions of school like after school sports. I can't grasp how adults in this country don't care more about the future of our country, I don't think that men and women in the 60's and 70's would have enjoyed the bland schooling process that is currently taking place in this country. Please help the future of our nation enjoy school by doing whatever you can to raise awareness about the changes that must take place within our public education system.

Things Have To Change!

I was searching through blogs about education and I came across a particularly disturbing blog that talked about a young boy who had dropped out of school. The boy was only 12 years old but had been out of school for the last three years. He described how he and his friends go to the library each day instead of school so that they can study and read together. Due to the emphasis placed on testing, many schools have begun to pay very little attention to students who test poorly because they bring down the the school's overall testing average which determines funding and other issues. Because schools don't pay as much attention to the students that don't test as well, many students like the boy in the blog I read get bored with school because they are quite intelligent but not stimulated enough, so they drop out. The school paid so little attention to the boy that his parents had no idea he had dropped out. He was skilled and smart enough to fake his report cards using Photoshop and InDesign, to the point that his parents never had a clue that their 12-year-old hasn't been to class since the third grade. This kid was highly intelligent too, something that was quite obvious to any reader of the blog.

See, the blog was written by a man who had run into the boy while he was not in school one day. The boy and man got into a conversation that was so intriguing to the adult, that when the boy invited the man to continue the conversation at a coffee shop he couldn't wait. The man asked what he and his friends studied, how he knew so much, and asked himself how a kid who only made it through the second grade could be so personable, mature, as well as very, very smart. In my opinion the boy in the blog is much better off than children who are stuck in public school these days. He and his friends practice different instruments together, play sports together, take tests together, study together, and love learning together.

My point is instead of being stuck in a classroom focused on the next standardized test that they are told over and over will effect their future, the boy and his friends are working together to become more educated members of society. They're having fun learning abut the world around them, something that todays' public schooling system has taken away from the children in this country. I'm not proposing that schools close and students educate themselves, I'm only pointing out that the most grounded, happy, mature, and intelligent 12-year-old I've ever read about dropped out of school when he was nine, so what does that say about the U.S. public school system. Vast changes must be made to our public education system, and using the boy from the blog I spoke about and the way he and his friends have made learning something that they love as an example would be a great starting point.