Submitted by jerome ennis, Sep 10, 2008 09:56

The problem that neither candidate is addressing is the need to abolish the U.S. Department of Education and putting education back into the hands of local communities. This would take them out of the national political arena with U.S. government control and it would severely limit the power of teacher unions who have done more harm than good in education generally. Throwing more money at the existing system is a waste of time, money and resources generally, and meantime, our schools continue to turn out students who are woefully ill-prepared to make good decisions or to seriously pursue complex studies at the university level.

The education system and our children are the future of this country. Four decades of federal government involvement in education has lead us to the soaring low point in educational outcomes that we now have. The federal government took a very good school system that could actually teach kids how to read, write, do math, and who could make rational decisions, and had developed in the areas of reason and logic, and have standardized tested them down to a point now that students can actually get a high school diploma, go on to college, and become teachers without ever having mastered basic literacy in the English language and cannot balance a checkbook, because they graduated High School, and then graduated college without possessing math skills at even 4th grade level. This is what is wrong with the schools period.

Get the Federal Government out of the School Business Period. Disband the U.S. Department of Education. Put Schools Back Under The Control of Local Communities. That is how they operated for the first 170 or so years of this Republic with Excellent Outcomes that made us one of the top 3 ischoold systems in the world by the mid 1960's and now after the Federal Government Hijacked Local and State Education, we are about #27 in the world while spending more than anyother country in the world. Most of the monies are Misspent on Running the Educational Bureaucracy and all the Federal Mandates that have destroyed the School System, while enriching Testing Companies, Snake Oil School Program Salesmen, Bus Manufacturing Concerns, Teacher Unions, and Computer Companies. Get back to Basics in Education at Every Level. Kids learn by Doing. That is, You Learn to Do Math by Doing Math. Gimmick Math Does Not Work. Kids learn how to write by actually writing, and not picking out letters and numerals on a keyboard. Kids learn content in history or literature by actually reading it and learning important points, and not by learning Trivial Pursuit, which is what most so called academic curriculums that are Approved By the U.S. Department of Education and Teacher Unions. No other discussions of public schools need to take place unless they include the Abolishment of The U.S. Dept. of Education.

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