Education Matters US

Reading is a gateway to open the imagination of the mind for children to explore other worlds, travel into the future and the past, learn our history, and learn lessons of life. During the summer teachers across the country hand out reading assignments to encourage students minds to expand, explore and learn. The question I have to ask after seeing some of the books on this list, is why are teachers dumbing down the reading lists? You can see what books were on this summers list at this link.

As Joanne Jacobs describes 2 of the books:

Actually, The Lovely Bones is a coming-of-death book narrated by a ghostly victim of a serial rapist-killer. I wouldn’t recommend it to young readers — or to parents. Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, another reading list favorite, is an excellent book but includes homosexual rape. These aren’t beach books.

Similarly, doing the school year, teachers place books on the required reading lists like the following:

1. “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut
2. “Beloved ” by Toni Morrison
3. “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
4. “Awakening” by Kate Chopin
5. “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
6. “Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
7. “The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World” by Michael Pollan
8. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
9. Fallen Angels

When a teacher assigns a book to read it should to enhance the learning experience. They should not be assigning books that have foul language, sex, rape, and violence. The students required to read these books could not see these images on the screen in a movie. Why is it necessary to have them read and picture these images in their minds?

Why are these books being thrust upon our children? There are many reasons for this. Many claim these new books are real life and allow the young readers to connect with the story with the hope they will read more. This reasoning seems to be more of an excuse. If teachers are to open the minds of children to explore, then why are the reading lists consisting of easier and profane books instead of books that challenge the mind?

Why is classical literature not good enough today? Why do students need easier reading lists? There are many answers to this, but one main reason is that students are not being taught to be effective readers because of reading instruction programs like Whole Language. Since these students are not effective readers, they cannot understand the more challenging concepts and words in the classics. They are more inclined to understand the new, easier reading books of today.

Schools are meant to educate our children and yet they continue to dumb down the reading; they dumb down the tests; and don’t want to be held accountable. Yes, there are some very good teachers out there who believe in challenging their students expecting them to learn. The problem is really the system. Our public education system is really a government monopoly. This monopoly is setup to work against accountability. It is a bloated bureaucracy that cares more for itself than the needs of the students or the wishes of the parents who want access to a quality education for their children. This system must be reformed.

The reform method is very simple. Change the funding from the bureaucracy to the child with the following steps:

• Designate an equal amount of money for each school-aged child
• The parents then choose which school their child will attend
  • Public – in or out of current district boundary
  • Private
  • Charter
• Remove all current mandates
• Require all financial data to be on the internet for all public/charter schools
• Require yearly testing of all students – all schools
• Require raw and aggregate testing results to be on the internet in a timely manner, i.e. in time for school selection for the upcoming school year – all schools
• Abolish NCLB, it will no longer be needed
• Abolish the Dept. of Education, it also will no longer be needed

These steps empower the parents instead of the bureaucracy. Government schools will now have to compete for students and thus money. They will no longer get a free ride based on a students’ zip code. This free market approach is simple and will benefit all of our children. Money will only be drained from the bad schools. Good schools will end up getting more money because they will attract more students. Kids in poorer communities will get more choices because money is now available for entrepreneurs to step in and help those students as well. This is being done now so I know it will happen when money is no longer being devoured by the government education monopoly.

Education should be a top priority for everyone. These children are our future. Do we want them to have a better country than we do now? Do we want to doom them to failure or being second-class citizens of the world? The answer is obvious, we want them to have a better country and we want them to continue to lead the world in not only freedoms, but economically and intellectually. We will doom them and this desire if we do not stop the government education monopoly from making drones out of our children. We must elect people who will fund the child and stop funding the bureaucracy.