Securing Our Children's Future?

We hear a lot of talk coming from the right about securing our children’s future.  They seem to be deeply concerned that if we continue to spend as we have in the past we will be saddling our kids with a mountain of debt that will bury their American dream forever.

 Point taken!  We agree that a balanced approach to fiscal responsibility is long overdue.  But what we have trouble understanding is how the conservatives can speak of preserving our children’s future while instituting policies that that doom the kids to failure before they even get started.

We’re talking about education.

The Republican Party is so hell bent on cutting spending that they have ravaged the very institution that provides the cornerstone for building our children’s future.  Republicans in Washington have spoken openly of downsizing or even eliminating the Department of Education.  At a time when every other industrialized nation is investing in education and finding innovative ways to get the most out of their children we are slashing funds and eliminating teachers in the name of fiscal responsibility. 

Slashing federal funds for education achieves the desired effect of reducing the debt and deficit.  But what are the affects as theses cuts trickle down to the state and local levels?  State governments were struggling to survive even before the economic downturn.  Now faced with the decline in funds flowing from Washington local governments are hacking away at their budgets with a machete.  First to go are policemen, firefighters and teachers.  Local governments run by conservative legislators have been particularly aggressive in eliminating those bothersome government employees and their burdensome benefit packages.  The result is overcrowded classrooms, crumbling and schools and tenured teachers who have long since lost the desire to teach effectively.    

The negative impact on our children is illustrated in every international study taken.  Among industrialized nations our kids rank anywhere from 17^th to 21^st in reading, math and science.  Our dropout rate is increasing as kids shun depressing classrooms monitored by disinterested teachers.  The dropout rate alone should be cause for concern. 

According to the National Center for education Statistics the median income for dropouts is $25,000 compared to $43,000 for those who graduate high school or get a GED.  The unemployment rate is 15.4% among dropouts and 9.4% among graduates.  And 75% of those currently locked up in prison are dropouts.

And now we hear people saying that maybe a college education isn’t worth the effort or the cost.  Millions of our kids are coming out of college saddled with tens of thousands in student loans and no prospects of employment to pay off the debt.  Yet republicans want to cut Pell Grants.  Mitt Romney’s simple solution is that kids should not take on student loans in the first place.  He says they should borrow the money from their parents.  Apparently Mr. Romney does not realize that most Americans are not financially able to float a six figure loan to their kids.

We understand that simply throwing more money at our education system is not the answer.  But slashing and burning our education system will not produce better students.  The key to the country’s future lies within our children.  If we cut the debt and deficit on the backs of our kids we will not only fail to secure their future we will have doomed them to failure. 

If we cannot find a way to efficiently and effectively enable our kids to compete on the world stage then all our boasting about being the greatest country in the world is nothing but hot air.