The Errors in any War on TError

For the few wondering, I purposely made the E in terror in caps to emphasize my point. Any 'War on Terror' is doomed to fail before it ever begins. Despite what anyone in the government would like to say, our 'War on Terror' is one that we could never win. The Error lies within the reason we (The United States) have people who want to see us bleed. It has very little to do with religion, weapons, oil, wealth, or power. It is simply a people who are mad at us for interfering with what they rightfully believe to be their business, and their problems.

It is impossible for us to keep up with the amount of terrorists being produced due to the fact that with every foreign death comes the birth of countless more willing to fight us. Any good speaker can start a mob by pointing a finger at the oppressive forces in their country. Truthfully, if they want us to leave, as it has been expressed, our timetable for pulling out of the middle east means nothing. It was our interference in the first place that led to so many deaths here in the states. It is our interference today that keeps us scared of boarding an airline and requires us to walk through an x-ray machine prior to ever getting close to said airplane.

Consider if you will the opposite was occurring in the United States today. Our military is in shambles, and half of them are corrupt, as are what little police we have. A few of us are happy to see aid coming to our shattered country when someone steps up and declares that the bombings will continue to get more intense until the foreigners have left our country. At first we would try to wait it out, but as our relatives begin to die, we too would push for that aid to leave. When it does not leave like it says it will, we too would become terrorists in order to force them to leave. Yes we would be killing our own, but anyone who embraces the enemy is not a friend. More people would turn daily and the violence would get more, and more intense. We would take the war to their shores in an effort to show them that our resolve will not break.

What started as something small has now grown to something unstoppable. The longer we are in the country that does not want us, the more the people who wanted us will turn against us, and the greater the risk that we will suffer the retaliation of an organized mob of people that look exactly like those you would help.

Our war on terror must come to an end for terror itself to come to an end. To those who would attack us, we are the terrorists. There will not be peace anywhere as long as a military presence remains in a country where the majority of it's residence see us as the enemy.

Education, the Great Debate

It should not be news to anyone by this point that we have one of the worst educational records of any industrialized country. Many people would blame this problem on "Standardized Testing" and focus on making working class people instead of future leaders. I personally find that the problem goes deeper than what I previously believed and the blame is to lay partially with our family structures and values.

I have been remiss in blaming the education system as a whole for not educating my children in a way that would prepare them for greatness. I have always had my hands in my children's schooling and some weeks email the teachers every day to find out how they are doing, and what they are doing. It was not until I volunteered that I found out the major causes of the slow progress of our children's education as whole.

1. Parental Interaction:  I quickly found that I was one of only two parents in my child's classroom that was actively interested in what their child was doing, how he/she was doing, and pushing them at home as hard, if not harder, than they were pushed at school to do their work correctly. The remainder of the crowded classroom were rarely paid attention to in terms of education outside of the school boundaries. 
2. Crowded Classrooms:  Standing and walking for long periods of time causes me unbearable pain and I will often use a wheelchair if I know I will be out of the house for a while. Inside my child's classroom is no less than 32 desks that are crowded closely together in order to fit into a room that was not designed for that many children. When I volunteer, I have no choice but to walk as the isles are just big enough for the children to squeeze through.
3. Teacher Salary:  My twins have separate teachers so that they are easier to handle. One teacher started this year with the minimum needed to be a full time teacher. The other teacher recently received her Masters Degree and has been with the district for around 5 years. The new teacher is paid a higher salary than the more educated teacher who has built up seniority in the district. Many teachers will lose their will to go beyond the normal lesson plan at this slap in the face, but for my child with the more educated teacher, she still drives on and extends her lessons outside of what they would normally be taught. 
4. Curriculum:  As it has been the design to produce workers and not leaders, the primary focus of public schools is to teach Math and English. Furthermore, the minimal amount of history, social studies, and science that is taught by most teachers is the oppressive version of our history instead of the true version. As an example, Christopher Columbus is taught in public schools to be the man who discovered America. Nowhere in the teachings does it mention that Columbus took Native slaves back to Europe with him. Our children celebrate a fictitious version of Thanksgiving Day as well. No where do the teachings speak of the systematic slaughter of the Native Americans and how after each slaughter the victors would declare the day a day of "Thanksgiving." I can understand the reasoning for sheltering children to a degree, but teaching them a lie is not teaching them at all and a waste of time. Furthermore, any type of logic and problem solving abilities are barely touched on, if at all, and that denies the children a chance to figure things our on their own. As a parent who is concerned about my children's future, I have taught them at home that which the school will not, but all of the children do not have the same opportunity.

In order to fix these problems, large scale changes would be required. To begin with, paying a teacher what they are worth would pull more teachers back to being truly involved in the teaching of their class. Where the money would need to come from to pay the teachers is an entirely different topic, but raising taxes, and cutting government officials perks and inflated paychecks would be a good start. Restructuring the standardized testing to include more subjects would be a good start as well. If the school day is too short to teach it all in, than extend the school day and send home more homework. My children get home at 330pm everyday, usually with no homework, and spend the next two hours playing until dinner is ready. When my children used to have to do homework, or I do something I would teach them myself, they would often complain about having to do more work the whole time we were working together. Now they have gotten used to it and only complain at first. We are breading laziness into everything we do, and our children are following our lead.

We need to change the path our children are on now, to produce a better future for them and ourselves.