I have spent the last ten years watching the world devolve. There is so much wrong with the picture that I can no longer look at it. My brain has been shredded beyond recognition. When national events defied logic, I experienced head explosions. By that I mean that I could not hold two mutually exclusive "facts" in my head at the same time. For example, We knew who blew up the towers in September of 2001, but we waited a year or two and marched into a completely innocent country and waged war. Iraq was innocent but we waged war on them. And don't try arguing that we thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because I knew they didn't and I discussed this with friends and coworkers before we went in. If I knew simply from paying attention to the news, then congress knew it too. Insert head explosion here.
Then came No Child Left Behind. Instantly recognizable as pretending to put out a non-existent fire by igniting a real one, this was more than I could bear as a teacher. Already frustrated by a teaching force that didn't know how to defend itself against outside idiots, I screamed for teachers to "JUST SAY NO!" When my voice came echoing back to me from the walls of empty silence, I left my tenure, pension, and precious students and quit the public schools. In the eight years since, I have watched insult add to injury, add to insult. If only the smug satisfaction of being right was enough. But public education is so important to a thriving democracy. Oh yeah, I forgot, the United States is a Republic.
Now we are looking at a public school system turned over to private profit making interests. The same kind of interests that turned our economy into a playground. Here are some head exploding facts.
1. School budgets are declining, but since they aren't doing a "good enough" job we should reduce the budget even further. While we are at it, let's dangle lots of money in front of them and watch as they scramble all over themselves to get some in a cruel "Race To The Top."
2. Schools are not producing enough scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and technology geeks so lets make sure that every child in the country learns the same stuff with the same competency. Then we can take instructional time away in order to perform standardized testing because taking standardized tests is what science, engineering, math, and technology are all about.
3. Teachers are not doing a "good enough" job so let's make the job so miserable that the best and the brightest would be happy to work where you can be fired without cause for two to three years, salary is tied to factors beyond control and your pension can be altered at will. People will be flocking to work in violent neighborhoods in dilapidated buildings with no materials to educate hungry, malnourished children who do not speak English.
4. Some schools are so bad at taking the standardized tests that we should set up charter schools that are exempt from tests and oversight. Make sure that it takes lots of parental involvement and savvy to navigate the system to get into these charter schools so that there will only be students with good home lives in these schools. Then the leftover children can try to pass those standardized tests without the distraction of well fed children with enriched life experiences.
Of course, having left that cushy job, I no longer had health insurance. Past fifty with some "pre-existing" conditions, I was not looking forward to finding out what health insurance really costs. You know what really costs the health care industry? Insurance.
My doctor's office has dedicated staff whose sole job is to talk to insurance companies. People who work in health insurance have one purpose, transferring money from you to your health care provider.
In order to do that they need offices, staff, paper, copy machines, telephones, computers, toilet paper, pens, ink cartridges, heat, lighting, desks, health benefits, retirement plans, and most expensive of all, CEO's. This is an entire layer of bureaucracy just to transfer money and suck up the majority of the money in the process.
"But Nancy," you say, "no one can afford to pay the bills if they get really sick."
And I would say, "True, no one can afford hospital bills for catastrophic illness, that is why we pool our money and those who don't get sick help pay for those who do."
"Isn't that socialism?" you cry.
"Yes," I reply, "and it is also called health insurance. If you have health insurance, you are participating in socialism at it's finest."
Then we have the economy. Or rather we no longer have an economy. America's dumbest and dirtiest congress is about to let the country default on it's debts over politics. The richest nation in the world is going to default on it's debts because we have to keep the tax rate low. There are about a hundred things wrong with this, but suffice it to say that GREENSPAN SAID HE WAS WRONG ABOUT CAPITALISM. Markets will NOT regulate themselves.
Finally, I cannot tolerate what passes as journalism today. Anybody can say anything they want, right, wrong, libelous, blasphemous, silly, or outrageous, it must be news. Billions of American dollars are blown away daily in wars, and the lead story on the evening news is what Lady GaGa wore on The View. We can spend a week pounding on a man with an unfortunate name and even less fortunate judgement, and fail to make the connection to the important investigation of Supreme Court Justices' conflict of interests.
It would seem that I have graduated to old fuddy duddy status. How do you seniors tolerate it?
