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Children waiting in line at a food bank, Nov. 2010. (photo: mirnanda via Flickr)
I confess that I didn’t watch the State of the Union speech. I’d already seen the leaked speech, already heard the spin in advance and many critiques before the speech even aired. And I agree, President Obama failed to make note of many challenges we face; it’s as if he was talking about some other utopian place where our struggles are meager and only more education is required to solve them.
Yeah. More education, that’s the ticket. We’ll “win the future” in a zero-sum world, where we only need to worry about improvement to Gross Domestic Product and the corporate bottom line to declare ourselves triumphant over the yellow- and brown-skinned hordes of Central and East Asia, with whom we have always been in a competitive war.
What poppycock.
If this president really wants a win of some kind, it should be over the know-nothings who embrace anti-intellectualism while demanding cuts to funding for our public education system. Call them out, don’t just broadly hint about needing more education, because the know-nothings aren’t pussy-footing around. They are actively encouraging the development of a for-profit education system where their corporate buddies will pick and choose students while picking our public pockets, pretending this will both save us money and improve our education system.
If know-nothings actually knew something, they’d know better than to advocate for a system which is inherently conflicted between making a profit and providing better educational outcomes.
And if this president really wanted a win over India and China through increased education, he’d have discussed the biggest challenges which face our children right now. In short, children cannot learn if their stomachs are growling from hunger and they are worried about having a roof over their head and afraid of violence at home and in the street. . . .
No Chinese or Indian “tiger mother” can overcome these kinds of challenges when they are structural in nature; just look at the number of Chinese and Indian parents in their respective homelands who still can’t provide enough food, shelter and security for their own children, and the deficits their countries still face because these basic needs are not met. Allowing our own country to backslide into third world status through the increasing number of hungry and homeless children is not winning, even if we are ahead of the poorest locations in India and China.
“Win the future”? Why not win our country’s present back first, by dealing with the very real fact that we are suffering unemployment at levels approaching the Great Depression, by dealing with the damaging effects of this economic uncertainty on the most defenseless among us — those Americans who actually represent the future the president wants to win. Why not make sure that their parents have jobs, they have shelter, they have enough food on the table? Why not then make sure that every child has a safe neighborhood in which to go to school?
And why not make sure that the essential American institution of public education — a part of our society since the Puritans arrived here seeking freedom, the part which made our nation great — remains public and free of the conflict of corporate interests?
Or is “winning the future” really only a corporate branding exercise to differentiate America Inc. from India Ltd. and China Corp.?
40 Comments
A great place to focus, Rayne. And thanks for the link to the history of early education in this nation. I think we breezed right by some of that history in grade school; it seemed so obvious that this New World would have prized education so highly.
When Obama spoke of education’s importance in the SOTU, the cameras wwent to Arne Duncan, of course. Knowing that he’s supposed to be at the helm advocating for the best education for all children is depressing, given his moves so far on charter schools and private-public partnerships in his Race to the Top.
I’ve listened to him and one of his deputies a couple times on C-Span, and their extreme lethargy was catching: I nodded off both times.
NCLB now seems to be big business; Rupert Murdoch recently hired the Supt. of NYC public schools to run his educational software business. Similar companies design programs, then their own software evaluates the success of their programs. How American!
I suppose it’s fine if the First Lady wants to fight childhood obesity at Walmart, but her efforts might be better spent making sure no kids are ‘food insecure’ or homeless.
I think one in seven Americans is now on food stamps, a projected 43 million for 2011. And I’m sure they run out before the end of the month.
How long has HAMP been known to be an uttr failure? Many economists believe it was designed to fail. But now Obama claims they will ‘fix it’. Maybe some of the projected 2.4 million foreclosures this year will be avoided. Way too little, too late.
“…in this nation people can make it if they try,” he said. I can’t get that sentence out of my head no matter how hard I try.
“Or is “winning the future” really only a corporate branding exercise to differentiate America Inc. from India Ltd. and China Corp.?”
“Winning the Future” is as empty a phrase as the empty man who uttered it.
He is destroying our livelihoods and our country. There is nothing more important now than stopping him.
Excellent post, Rayne!
Recommended!
‘Or is “winning the future” really only a corporate branding exercise to differentiate America Inc. from India Ltd. and China Corp.?’
I think you’ve just about put your finger on it right there.
I had thought for a long time that America really cares for its children but has no real interest in the well-being or safety of other people’s children around the world.
I was wrong: We don’t care about anyone’s children. We only care about profit and what money can buy. We have lost our souls and have replaced them with greed and selfishness.
It’s not about you or me or our kids. It’s about Barry’s buddies.
I was scanning my car radio earlier today and found a station playing this as a response to SOTU.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRf1Ad_Txsg
“Winning the Future” serves one purpose for Obama: Taking our collective eyes off the present.
Winning the Future (TM) becuz the U.S. has lost the past.
America is suffering terribly. I agree, children can’t be educated when all they can think about is how hungry they are. The saddest part of all this is that Americans are not even asking for handouts like the elites do. They just want a job! They want work so they can earn their wages to buy food and put a roof over the family.
After all that wild floundering and acting before the close of session in December and our President telling us we were held hostage on those tax cuts, you’d think the job market would be abuzz. Instead, we get nothing and insane articles about how it is all our fault for not being educated enough or that we are just lazy.
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m sick to death of being told that the criminals that are taking our collective wealth are smarter and therefore more entitled!
Rayne, I forgot to say thanks for the post and the picture. Here in Bank of America headquarters land we had local nooze showing the food bank, soup kitchen lines, and shelters overflowing at Thanksgiving and the Holidays. Since then, nothing is being shown and nobody is talking about it.
Out of sight-out of mind. These are the families of America and our future leaders that are standing the frigid cold waiting for a bowl of hot soup!
He wants one thing…he wants to be Reagan II.
Rayne,
The biggest compliment I can give for your post is that it resonates with shades of Redd!
Thanks for this post. I too, after 34 years as an educator feel that education has become another commodity,
Stop. Making. Sense! You’ll upset the Obama personality cultists AND the corporatists AND the know-nothings altogether simultaneously at the same time!
Seriously, great post. “Win the future,” the only President we’ve got said. Win the future from what? From whom? For whom? Not for MY kids, I’m sure.
Are we going to send the Marines there to conquer it and make it safe for American Exceptionalism? Seems a little hollow to me, when we can’t control Afghanistan any better than the British or the Russians did. When we can’t even maintain our highway system or pay our cops and firefighters.
Not to mention teachers. Barry did have a lot of nerve to get up there and encourage young people to go into an underpaid profession where they will be given all of the responsibility and none of the authority to actually teach kids how to reason. And then be demonized when they inevitably fail.
You said it all, Rayne, eloquently and in depth.
Thanks n rcc’d . . . .
Many many years ago my sil pointed out to me how difficult it would be for any child to learn while suffering from a toothache. Simple deprivations of poverty that we hardly ever think about.
Amen, Sister Rayne.
My dad used to say, way back in the 50′s, “If we don’t bring the rest of the world up to our standard of living, they’ll bring us down to theirs.”
Hi guys,
Just an open question for the group, how would you feel about government subsidizing private debt to pay for private school tuition?
Just like the govt. makes direct loans to students to pay for private college tuition, would you oppose a similar federal service for elementary or secondary tuition?
IMO, we already have a large gap in the education levels across the country. Some states have a better system and even within those states, some schools have better programs.
If we go to all private then which ever corporate entity runs the school will cut costs and programs to make profits. I am still mad that my children did not get the same level of education that the children in the wealthy states get.
Um, no, not debt. Borrowing to pay for elementary or secondary ed is a HUGE hit on the poor who can’t afford to borrow at any subsidy.
And if you hadn’t noticed, USG subsidies for colleges mainly go toward colleges in terms of inefficiencies, not to the students. Integral part of the mafia of the intelligentsia.
And if you hadn’t noticed, the U.S. has too much debt of every sort already.
Any other Qs?
Recommended.
Ironically, despite the corporate American attempts to grossly exploit India, a network of food kitchens from an organization originating from Amritapuri, Kerala, India serves hot meals to poor and homeless Americans in 23 cities via a team of volunteers (and, in case you are wondering, there is no “sell job” going on as I checked out the organizational leadership myself). This includes a new food kitchen location in the Washington, DC area. No such thing has been done by Americans in India or anywhere else. Instead, we practice Shock Doctrine on the poor and needy. How can it be a surprise when the chickens come home to roost? If we don’t like the logical results of our apathy, greed and hate that we see now, we must not delay taking the practical step of rehabilitating our minds, our attitudes and behavioral habits so we have a near- and long-term future.
Borrowing money to go to high school? Then college? How much debt do you think a kid can handle?
Absolutely. A new Reagan.
One wonders when TPTB will decide they’ve gotten all they can get out of Barry. Then what? An Obama Memorial?
It is impossible to agree with you more. Still tripping on the India and China comments and absolutely loved the ‘out build the rest of the world’ thing. Okay. Sure, just as soon as we pick up enough cans along the side of the road here so we can put enough fuel in the vehicle to get around to the dumpsters to collect food for today. Then, we’d be glad to help Out Build the World. Whatever that means.
“…President Obama failed to make note of many challenges we face; it’s as if he was talking about some other utopian place where our struggles are meager and only more education is required to solve them.”
Here’s Jonathan Schell at The Nation:
“It’s true that the United States’s educational system is measurably slipping. It’s also true that the country’s infrastructure has decayed badly. And yes, the United States would benefit from whatever technical innovation it can bring off, just as any country would. But none of those problems, needful of attention as they are in their own right, is the chief cause of the United States’s economic doldrums—its stubborn high unemployment, its persisting housing bust, its galloping economic inequality. These were the fruit of an economic crash brought on by a misguided, corrupt, incompetent, larcenous, unregulated financial establishment. The relevant remedies are not better technology or some contemporary equivalent of sending a man to the moon. … The remedies needed are a re-regulation and reconstruction of the financial system, plus a major, Keynesian style stimulus program to create jobs and purchasing power, and so to jar the economy out of its stupor. But none of that was in Obama’s speech. On the contrary, his proposal to freeze spending for five years threatened more economic stagnation.”
Doesn’t that picture hurt? That little one in the green must be four or five years old, and yet she looks anxious. How is she going to get the most out of school which she will soon start?
And where will she be in 14 years, if our electeds don’t get a grip?
This is a great post. I mean really Obama, can you say duh?
How long will America allow these abusers to pound crap in our ear.
Every day, excellent content gets plastered all over FDL, and at the end of each day, what?
More and better Democrats?
Is this the gist, here? – More and better Democrats?
Its important to keep these children ignorant and desperate otherwise they will not participate in our illegal wars or acquiesce in the subversion of their civil liberties.
Thanks, Rayne. Great diary.
It was announced today that Hawaii’s 4th and 8th graders rank in science education behind every state in the nation but Mississippi.
I guess that means it’s outranked by educational luminaries AL, AK and LA.
And everyone else.
And “the present” isn’t looking so great either.
All US major universities recruit abroad. Yale, the Bush alma mater, aggressively recruits and admits from China.
Brings a lot of questions to mind that Hawaii is so far behind.
– Are good science teachers being actively recruited?
– Are corporations which are science/math-centric and do business in Hawaii helping with encouraging strong programs? (Hawaii is home to several businesses in biotech, for example.)
One thing I ran across which disturbs me, at the National Science Teachers Association site:
Is this the case in Hawaii – are they not tracking improvement closely because it doesn’t count? (This could be a problem in many states, not just Hawaii.)
Did you see a reference to the Democratic Party at all in this post?
Let me revisit the theme for you: the diary was about President Obama’s State of the Union speech and its focus on “winning the future” while ignoring what’s necessary to winning here and now as well as the future.
Try to stay focused here, unlike the president, okay?
access to elementary education in the primary years is recognised as a millenium development goal to which the USA is a signatory – i do wonder why exercising a human birth right should involve incurring debt at all, subsidised or not
also, subsidies are funded through taxes – it would be a simpler world to use tax revenues to guarantee access to education, at primary, secondary and tertiary levels directly rather than adding layers of bureaucracy to cosset the middlemen which in reality adds to the financial burden on tax payers and citizens
i am not arguing for the abolition of private sector participation in education for profit but for public access to that concept of choice and the right of taxpayers to demand their tax dollars are spent in a manner that satisfies the most rigorous cost-benefit metrics
all universities across the world, not just in the USA, recruit from around the world – higher education should focus on creative and analytical thinking and ideas have always ridden the global winds – recruitment nationally or internationally is not really an issue, it’s a furphy
The onset of international admittance has restricted US students. That is a fact. Say what you want after that.
Amen.
Thank you, Rayne,
Yes, O & Co, Inc., think Where’s The Food?, Where’s The Financing?, Where’s That Future?, are questions that just don’t need to be addressed by them. WTF?
We’re The Fools, if we believe a single word of it.
WTF is just a slogan like everything else about this administration. It means nothing. They’re trying to take the attention away from what is happening right now and it will work – for awhile. But lots of people seem to be catching on. The rebellion may happen but not as soon as we would like.