Did I support the war? Not at first, I am sure I wrote journal entries against it. But then I was (mis)lead to believe that Iraq was a real immediate threat and I relucantly conceded that it might be worth taking care of. It turns out that it was not, they KNEW it was not, they lied to us.

Now we need to spend hundreds of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars to clean it up.

Yes, I’m happy that the Iraqis were freed from a horrible leader. Sure, I wanted to see Saddam out of power too. But at what cost to the United States?

I was watching the news recently, I don’t do it much, but at the end they had a short segment talking to a woman without medical insurance. She has cancer and her husband lost his job where he had benefits so she was forced to stop treatment. She can’t get direct governement intervention because her life is technically not in real danger now, but the cancer will progress. By the time she is sick enough to have the government to be required to intervene it will be too late and she will die. How can we let this happen? The United States is the most powerful country in the world, and our elected officials can sit back and watch their own citizens die like this? And I wonder how many cases such as this there are! It’s medically proven that early detection of many problems is the key to saving lives, and so many people will not get this early detection because they can’t afford to see a doctor unless they are seriously ill. In some cases this serious illness is more expensive to treat than if it had been detected earlier, it’s more expensive AND people might die. Where is the benefit here? Is anyone thinking long term? This scares and upsets me.

I was watching WHYY (local PBS station) last night, and the show “Now with Bill Moyers” was on. It’s usually quite a good show, last night they did a segment focusing on the “No Child Left Behind Act of 2001” and pulling up examples of how “Accountability” clauses probably do more harm than good (article from show segment here). This accountability often manifests itself in standardized testing, teachers then are required to teach students to pass the test, instead of showing them that learning can be fun and beneficial. They aren’t taught to learn, they are taught to pass a test, and there is a big difference. One man was interviewed and said that his son used to love to read, but now he sees it as a chore, teachers focus on the test so much that they drill it into the children that they must pass. In many instances children are put into “special” classes for learning disabled simply because they are unable to learn in the way they are pushed to learn. In some districts anyone who is an immigrant is pushed into special immigrant classes that speak their language and move slower, no matter how smart the student is, they are held back. It seemed that in both these cases the schools could get more fundying, and the test results would be off (often looking better than reality) since students were mis-classified. It’s really really sad, and I know that if I was taught in this manner I would not have been sucessful in school, I had a slow start, but was able to get out of special ed in 3rd grade, what if I had been stuck there because my school wanted better test results and fudning? I would not have the interest that I have in learning now. I would not be as smart as I am now. That is a tragedy. People’s lives are ruined by this.

“Former Houston, Texas school superintendent Rod Paige was tapped by President Bush to be Secretary of Education because he had a reputation as an educator who could turn things around in public schools. Paige had orchestrated what some called the “Houston miracle,” a dramatic decline in dropout rates and an increase in test scores. But critics and whistleblowers contend that Paige’s methods created the climate for falsification of test scores and drop out rates.” – From “This week in NO
W” section of the pbs website.

The show then moved into how schools often lie about dropout rates to get more funding, to pass the “standards” set up (article here). In Georgia the “official” graduation rate, for instance, is 83.5%. 16.5% dropout rate, in my mind that is inexcusable in itself! Two independent studies done, however, put this graduation rate closer to 54%. 46% of these students were dropping out of school! That’s outragous! And the United States Secretary of Education is guilty of this misleading, to a gross extent. This is a problem, and something needs to be done about it.

Public schools are the key to our future. How can they be so neglected? In the town that I grew up in vast amounts of local money went into providing the best school possible for the children. My parents sacrificed a lot to put my sisters and I into a school that would provide a good education. We didn’t need some statewide or nationwide test to tell us that we were learning, we had amazing teachers, nice building, caring adults, involved parents, and it was always clear to me that the number one goal there was education. The school I went to had the lowest dropout rate in Maine, and consistantly showed the highest scores in the state on standardized tests (tests that didn’t influence passing or failing school, they were just given as an indicator). And these were not falsified, it was a small school, I KNEW my classmates, and I KNEW that they were some very intelligent people.

What was the key to the success of the public school I went to? Money. The local community was healthy and focused enough to come together and pass laws that made it possible to put extensive amount of funding into our school system. They could hire good teachers, they didn’t need to constantly worry about the funding they’d get next year to buy enough paper, we always had enough text books, our computer labs in high school always had fast enough computers. Now, if schools nationwide were given a similar chance, if teachers and administrators did not need to focus so often on funding I think they could get back to the whole point of the school, learning. I think teachers and school administrators generally mean well, I don’t think a majority of them want to comprimise a child’s education, but it’s so impossible to do good when money is a constant issue.

United States citizens are dying because they can’t get the medical treatment they need. Schools are more focused on the need for more funding, sometimes going to devious lengths to get it, instead of trying to educate our children. This all makes me so angry! “We don’t have the money” to fix these things you might say. Well maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe taxes do need to be higher (in Canada sales tax in most providences is around 15%, part of the reason being that they need to cover the health care costs). Maybe we need to stop fighting wars we can’t afford! Our interests should lie first in taking care of our citizens in the most basic ways, food, education and healthcare.

I’m sure I’m just saying what thousands before me have said. But it’s important.

Last night we had a couple of the glow-in-the-dark rogues. Those bottles are so cool! And the beer is good. We ordered a pizza too, it was yummie. We had a nice night.

Today we arent really going to do much. Probably do some reading, writing some emails. A nice relaxing day %)

*wanders off*