My response to Margaret Arbuckle

I submitted this to the News & Record as a Counterpoint submission earlier in the month. It has not run.

But it will run here:

With all due respect, Margaret Arbuckle misses the point on globalization as it pertains to public education in the U.S.

Education is indeed the path to success, but our public education system has not kept up with the global economy so many of us aspire for our children to latch on to. Our students will never be ready for the knowledge-based economy Ms. Arbuckle mentions unless we solve the problems plaguing our educational system.

We have a governor who gives "lip service" to education while gutting the state budget that public education can operate under. Massive teacher and paraprofessional layoffs combined with sliced school and teacher supply budgets threaten the livelihood of our children statewide. This, combined with the annual rogue testing that zaps the creativity right out of our classrooms, occurring in schools that are crumbling to the ground, in a state with double-digit unemployment...all of this is festering right here at home, in our neighborhoods. And it should shake everyone of us right out of our armchairs and prompt us to do something.

Simply put, we're trying to educate students in the 21st-century with a 19th-century curriculum, with 17th-century standardized testing, using technology out of the 15th-century, operating in a state economy out of the 13th-century; and our children are being educated in buildings out of the 11th-century.

What is the answer? How did North Carolina get into this mess? More importantly, how do we get out?

Stop electing politicians who only give lip-service on political pamphlets, only to do nothing while in office. Demand that they stop spending, balance the budget (not on the backs of our children), kick the fat-cats out of Raleigh, and demand true accountability from our schools balanced with a world-class curriculum that does not turn our schools into testing factories every May. Demand leaner central offices, demand school board members that have the children's best interest at heart (not agenda-driven nor setting the stage for future self political aspirations), and collectively, demand that our cities, counties, and state as a whole do better...so that we may be able to begin recruiting real businesses again, recruiting real companies again, and having citizens who view our city, our county, and our state as one to relocate to, not one to shy away from.

Investment in our educational system begins in our own house. And we need to clean our house.

--
Erik "E.C." Huey
Greensboro, NC (GSO)
owner & moderator,
http://guilfordschoolwatch.blogspot.com/