One In Five American Children Living In Poverty

If turn on your television today you will find yourself inundated with reports of the unrest in Egypt.    What you won’t find is this headline;

ONE IN FIVE AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE LIVING IN POVERTY

In the United States of America, the richest country in the history of the planet, a country of unfathomable wealth an opportunity…

ONE IS FIVE AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE LIVING IN POVERTY

How can this happen?  How can this country, of all the countries in the world, turn a blind eye to this problem?  How can we afford to build hospitals and schools and milk production plants around the world when our very own children are hungry?

This problem that we have starts with education.  Education breeds opportunity.  Opportunity allows people to pull themselves up out of the bowels of poverty.  But our education system is in disarray, our schools are in disrepair and too many of our teachers are allowed to teach because their continued employment is based on their tenure rather than their effectiveness.  In many ways the quality of the education that our children receive is based primarily on the zip code in which they live.

So what are we going to do about it?  Some of our leaders want to cut education subsidies and others want eliminate the department of education altogether.  But that will not fix the problem.  It will only transfer the burden to the states that are already on the verge of bankruptcy and rely on the federal government to stay afloat.

Education is the key to the future of our country.  We need to do better.  We need to focus our energy and our resources on OUR children instead of every other dark corner of the world.

The unrest in Egypt is a compelling story.  It grabs our attention for we are watching history being made.  We need to give our children that same attention for they are our history.

ONE IN FIVE AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE LIVING IN POVERTY