Previously, I’ve
lambasted the Republicans for their corporate and terrifying views and ideas
about education. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the concept of privatizing
education in the US is one of the more disturbing campaign trends that I have
seen. I pray to god that I will never see the day that happens. The idea of
corporate owned schools is too ridiculous to fathom, yet the Republican
candidates are pushing for it quite hard.
What
about the Democrats? I have to show both sides of the story after all, so I
started doing some research on what Obama has done during his time in office.
In less than five minutes time I found myself with a browser full of tabs. I
found news story after news story detailing all of the bills that he has passed
to help education and educators. I’m
going to go through a few of them below.
One
of the first things that I found was Obama’s reform of the No Child Left behind
act. In September of last year, Obama permitted states to ignore some of the
main tenets of Bush’s No Child Left Behind act.
He commented on this
decision with “We can’t let another generation of young people fall behind
because we didn’t have the courage to recognize what doesn’t work, admit it and
replace it with something that does. We’ve got to act now.” Now that sounds
like the president I voted for. Link
He went on to say, “Teachers
too often are being forced to teach to the test. Subjects like history and science have been
squeezed out. And in order to avoid
having their schools labeled as failures, some states perversely have actually
had to lower their standards in a race to the bottom, instead of race to the
top.”
So, right off the bat I
stumbled across something spectacular. Barack Obama undid one of the biggest
failures in education from the Bush administration. So, I took an internet
stroll over to one of my favorite websites “WhatTheFuckHasObamaDoneSoFar.com”
It didn’t take long to stumble over this gem. (citation) When Obama passed The American Recovery and Restoration Act in during his
administration, he saved the jobs of over 400,000 teachers across America. That
is absolutely astounding! The entire
state of Wyoming has 568,000 people. Obama’s
work saved almost an entire state’s worth of education jobs. Why is no
one shouting this information from the rooftops? But wait, there’s more. Part
of the Recovery Act was providing 70.3 billion dollars for educational program.
(citation) I want to demonstrate just how much 70 billion dollars is. Egyptian president Mubarak is believed to be
the richest man in the entire world. His net worth is 70 billion dollars. That’s
how much 70 billion dollars is. (citation) I’m not done. A stealth bomber costs about a billion dollars to produce. It is
one of the world’s most advanced planes. It would take seventy stealth bombers
to equal the amount of money Obama put towards education. At every step of the way, Obama has been
supporting education in America it seems. I was absolutely astounded to find
this out. It would seem like this information should be brought up any time
someone discusses education funding in politics. The further I go looking into
what Obama has done for this countries education system, the more I am
astounded.
One just needs to mosey
on over to the White House page of Education to see just how dedicated he is to
this nation’s children. Here’s a great one for example, “On December 16, 2011
the Obama Administration announced that nine states -- California, Delaware,
Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island and
Washington -- would receive grant awards from the $500 million Race to the
Top-Early Learning Challenge fund.” That’s just one example. The list goes on and
on down the page.
This being an election
year, things are beginning to heat up in the debates. I’ve mentioned that the
Republican view of education terrifies me to my core. Rick Santorum, a
proponent of privatizing the education system, recently made a comment that has
caused quite a stir. Last week Santorum claimed that Obama was a “snob” that
wanted everyone to go to college. This was meant to be pejorative, but It doesn’t
seem that bad to me. What’s wrong with wanting people to go to college?
Absolutely nothing! Hell, a significant portion of our country is currently
unemployed. Wouldn’t helping people increase their skill sets and get a degree
help fix that issue? I’m no economic theorist; I’m just a poor white college
student with a keyboard. However, it seems to make sense to me that education
is a good thing. Maybe I’m ranting, but I have opinions and this blog is an
outlet for me to express them.
I’m actively afraid of “intellectual
fear.” I went to high school in a rural small town deep in the mountains of
North Carolina. Something that astounded me was the idea that a college
education would turn you into an elite snob. College wasn’t pushed very hard
where I’m from. I thought it was just small town intellectual fear. But now I’m
hearing it from a front runner of the Republican Party? That is terrifying to
me. That small Republican town that I came from is going to hear that Santorum
quote and agree with him.
That is why I thank my
lucky stars that today it came out that Obama holds double digits over either Romney
and Santorum. (citation) Also, today Obama came out and asked the country’s governors to invest more
money into education. He believes that if the United States is going to be able
to compete in a global economy, we need to have a highly trained workforce. The
key to this, he says, is higher education. (citation)
I suppose that this
blog became a little bit of a rant of why I’m voting Obama again, but I’ll be damned
if choosing a President that supports education isn’t one of the most important
things I can think of.
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