No Child Left Behind..Seriously?

Ladies and gentlemen it is time for a wake-up call. The whole notion of us not leaving folks behind in our society is a joke. Our country operates a capitalist economic system that requires societal divisions in order to operate effectively. I know that we abhor class distinctions; however, in order to maintain our somewhat stable society, we need upper, middle and lower classes.

I know that NCLB was promoted as a possible remedy to closing the “achievement gap,” by providing the metrics for raising the academic achievement for all students. However, the achievement gap will only be closed when individuals begin to value education and there will always be a segment of our society that do not want to do what is in their own best interest.

The global environment requires us to utilize our human resources to their fullest capacity; however, we need people to perform those lower level tasks that help keep our society running. Lower wage jobs are not bad. In fact, many of us have worked one or two at some point during our lives. I, for one, realized that I didn’t want to do those types of jobs for a living, so I positioned myself so that I could have better employment prospects in the future. My experiences have taught me to value education and to impart to my children the value of education.

In the end we need to understand that success, for many of us, comes as a result of failure and our ability to not let the disappointment of failure deter us from our goals. All of us were endowed with free will and with this freedom comes responsibility. In a free market society, people are allowed to make decisions for themselves based upon what they want out of life. If they choose to lag behind then so be it. We should not concern the bulk of our attention with those wanting to remain behind, but instead focus on helping those who want to get ahead.

Where is Haiti?

Following the tragic events in Haiti, the world mobilized to provide support to this tiny nation. Although I have no issue with the outpouring of altruism, I have a question: Where is Haiti? You see, prior to this event, many in the world had no idea about what was going on in Haiti and even fewer really cared.

My question does not center on the geographical location of this nation, but where it was in our consciousness. Relatively few outside of the NGO’s that provide support to this poverty stricken nation concerned themselves with the plight of the people, its infrastructure or its economic condition. Now it seems that it’s all that people can talk about.

Much of what is occurring is now centered on the question “how will we help the children?” Many are talking of adopting children from Haiti and in fact, ten Americans are sitting in jail for allegedly trying to steal children away from Haiti in order to adopt them. I find this troubling since we have children here in America who are in need of loving homes and no one is concerned about their circumstances. The larger question here is “Why do we, as a nation, seemed more concerned about those outside of our borders than those similarly situated within?”

Some estimates site that there are over 400,000 children in the American foster care system. With this number of American children needing assistance, how could anyone consciously look at adopting children from anywhere else?

I am by no means an isolationist, but at what point do we begin to put America first and everyone else second, third and fourth?