#21 A Gut Campaign (3); and another great blogsite

First let me direct you a related blogsite that I'm really enjoying. It's posted by a colleague of my older daughter in NYC, and its author has experience with presidential politics. Here's the link: http://www.nickragone.com/. Nick is the author of three books, and I'm currently engrossed with his most recent one, "President's Most Wanted" (Potomac Press, 2008). It’s a truly fun and informative read. Visit his site to see his insights and perspectives on the upcoming election.

All the polls say that the economy is the major issue. If we've learned anything from James Carville in 1992, we will know that "It's the Economy, stupid!" People will vote their pocketbooks, and right now a lot of voters are hurting economically. Of the other two E's, Education and the Environment, the environment will be a significant issue in the campaign that is beginning. (did you notice that smooth segue from Nick's blogsite back to my previous post's discussion, or are you still jarred from the shock of that shift?).

The environment relates to the bush administration’s foreign policy, which for many reasons has been disastrous (dubya’s initial and long opposition to the Kyoto Treaty, for example, did not win friends abroad).

dubya now claims to acknowledge that there is such a thing as global warming, though his statements don’t have the ring of authentic belief that it exists. No matter. When the melting glaciers flood Crawford TX, he’ll become a believer. My younger daughter and her family need to get out of Los Angeles before that happens.

Another major topic of environmental concern in the upcoming campaign will definitely be economy-related: drilling for oil, and drilling, digging, and raping nature for other natural resources (natural gas, oil sands, coal) to reduce our dependence on foreign suppliers and to make us “energy independent.” With gas prices hitting new highs almost on a daily basis, we know the economic distress being visited upon most of us, and the trickle-down effect of these price increases.

Thus, environmental concerns are very closely related to economic concerns, and BO and JMcC will go mano a mano on this relationship. An interesting sidenote: despite the rumors about BO’s Islamic background, it may be difficult to continue to portray the Middle East suppliers as the bad guys, when we realize that Canada is our largest supplier of oil. Here, environmental concerns are very closely related to foreign policy concerns. I hope dubya doesn't realize Canada's so important to our oil needs: I don't want him to get any ideas about invading north.

The other issue, Education, should be significant in the campaign because it is so vital to our future as a nation, but it will probably not be as major an issue as it deserves to be. Education has never seemed as sexy as the economy or the environment.

Nonetheless, the country is hurting from the bush administration's approach to education. "No child left behind" hasn't worked well. It has put pressure on the students to pass certain tests, and thus it has put pressure on the teachers to teach to the tests. That's not education; that's not teaching youth how to learn and how to prepare for a "lifetime of learning." That's just teaching young people how to prepare for exams. By the way, learning how to prepare for exams is not a bad thing. But it should not be the sine qua non of our educational system.

I taught formally (i.e., in a classroom) for forty years, including my Ohio State TA experience. I’ve learned from correspondence from former students how important it was to them to be excited about the topics being taught and about the experience of learning. Bear in mind that these students had become excited about Victorian literature -- that's Carlyle and Ruskin and Mill, oh my. Or, if you prefer poetry to nonfiction prose, that’s Tennyson, Browning, and Clough, oh my.

The bush administration has failed to address, even to begin to address, the long-term, underlying diseases infecting our public education system. One problem is lack of respect for the profession, as manifested in lack of resources provided to school districts and low salaries paid to school teachers. I have long ranted about the millions of dollars paid to individual actors and athletes, while school teachers -- especially in states like Idaho -- often have to take part-time additional jobs just to provide basic decencies (food, shelter anyone?) for their families. I'm not exaggerating.

The concern is deeper than can be addressed by showing more respect and throwing more money at the problems. My experiences as a graduate student at a state university with one of the best teacher education programs in the nation, and as a faculty member and administrator at a state university with not one of the best teacher education programs in the nation, have helped me understand that the current method of teaching teachers is a major part of the problem. We have an entrenched teacher-education system in this country, in which good people brought up in a bad system then pass on the weaknesses to their professional progeny.

Right now, changing our approach to teaching (in part through changing our approach to teacher education) is an important undercurrent in the election, as our presidential candidates struggle with the various problems our country faces. The decline in the quality of public education has contributed to the Religious Right’s increasing emphasis on home-schooling and to the bush administration’s desire to privatize public education (favoring credits and vouchers for families to send their children elsewhere than public schools). Not surprisingly, we have had a related decline in the percentage of students still in public schools. Unless the new administration seriously addresses public education, the decline in quality and the decline is number of students in public education will continue.

This discussion may not surface significantly during the campaign, but it will surface during the next president’s administration. We need to elect a president who is knowledgeable about, or is smart enough to become knowledgeable about, public education’s needs.

--triton--