State of the Union Options

[impala454]

Is tonight at 8pm. All you Bush haters get your DVRs ready so you can slice up every frame and make some funny youtube videos!

[Spectatrix]

The drive to go to college is (almost unarguably) a motivation issue. That motivation can be generated internally (a drive to get out poverty, for instance) or externally (parents, teachers, coaches, etc.) The more positive factors a student has around them, I think the better a chance they have at doing well and going on to college or at least trade school, but the poorest students in the crappiest areas with the crappiest influences can still get up that drive, just as a rich white kid from an encouraging, college-educated family can fail to succeed.

Case in point: my step-brother is a year older than me, has gone to Tech and withdrawn several times (I think he got on academic suspension last time around), is in massive credit card debt, and has changed jobs twice in the last six months. Granted, he's doing better work than flipping burgers, but until this latest job, he was working in places with little advancement potential. Whether his latest job will be better remains to be seen, but I think probably so. He's very smart, as much as I am (he was doing mechanical engineering too, actually started before I did) but just didn't want to do the college thing. Maybe eventually, but not now.

Anywho, funneling money into poor-performing schools seems like a noble, but I think it's usually an exercise in futility. It can help attract better teachers, but the really good ones are still going to want to go to nicer schools, even if the pay is a little lower (there are exceptions, of course). And even if the school gets staffed by superb teachers, you still have the problem of down-and-out students de-motivating each other and reinforcing each others' shortcomings. Yeah, some will rise above that, but not most.

I would much rather give parents the opportunity to move their children to a better school without breaking the bank. Whether than means providing "grants" to parents of school age children who want to move them, or putting ALL schools under private control with grants, vouchers, or tax breaks for parents to put their kids wherever they want, or some other solution I've not yet thought of... I dunno. I just know that the public school system is largely failing our youth and I would never place a child of mine in one. Of course I'm probably going to homeschool them, so the whole thing is moot for me.