Education

Getting people to vote is all well and good, but it also leads to the second major problem that caused this situation, lack of education. Not all eligible voters finish high school.

Our high school drop out rate is too high. Our educational system needs to be restructured. I agree with President Obama that all schools should be in good repair and it is our responsibility to make sure that they are, but we also need more teachers and teacher aides. This should be a primary area for stimulating the job market with more than just construction type work.

While we are repairing our schools we might consider using separate high schools for boys and girls. Yes, it is necessary to teach children social graces, however, when social activity starts leading to sexual activity it is time to separate the sexes, educationally speaking. If we take away the primary breeding ground for teenage boy/girl relationships, then it should necessarily follow that in doing so we will lower the incidents of teenage pregnancy that perpetuate the high rate of high school drop outs. When you take away the primary distraction opposite sexes provide for each other we should also end up with students who have higher grades. Students who are more successful in their studies will also be less likely to drop out. School is not the place for a social life, it's the place for an education.

Yes, separate high schools will create a few minor logistics problems. We'll need to buy more buses and hire more drivers, which creates a few more jobs, but that's a rather small price to pay to lower the rate of high school drop outs and teen pregnancy. We may also have to build a few more high schools because some towns only have one high school and if we did this they would need two. Is that such a bad thing? More schools mean more teachers.

You may not think that this segment of our population is an area that needs immediate attention, however, you're wrong. High school drop outs and pregnant teenagers are where the habits of spending money you don't have begin. Spending money we didn't have is one of the things that got us into this mess and that was caused by lack of education.

You don't really think millions of people went to banks and said," we want to buy homes we know we can't afford, show us how it's done." Yes, it's true that ignorance is no excuse for the law, however, as a society it is our responsibility to make sure our citizens are well educated enough to know whether or not they can afford to buy a house. We dropped the ball.

I know there are those who believe the answer to this problem is not education, but bankers that don't lend money to people they know can't pay it back. Okay, we could do that. Which means that we won't be able to sell many of those empty houses any time soon. And that's okay. Bankers shouldn't loan money to people they know can't pay it back. Why don't you want to spend money on education? Because that's what your argument is saying. You'd rather not spend money on education and let bankers shoulder the responsibility for people spending money they don't have. If you really believe bankers are the ones that got us into this mess, then what makes you think they won't find another way to let this happen again? The cure for ignorance is education. I'm not sure there is a cure for greed. Bankers certainly didn't encourage people to get into huge amounts of debt out of the goodness of their hearts.

It is the philosophy of this blog that as much as the roof of this house does need to be repaired quickly, before the next storm comes, fixing the roof will not help the foundation problems.

Copyright © 2009 Annette Fortunato

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