Education Thoughts

Education Thoughts

The State of the Union is generally seen as the most important speech a president makes each year. And this year, amid a faltering economy, an increasingly polarized political climate and in the post-event storm following the shooting in Arizona, President Obama delivered a speech that appealed to America for a renewed sense of respect for education.
In the speech, Obama had an urgent message for America’s students: become teachers. Get educated, he said, and then pass it on to other American children. Help renew a sense of reverence toward teachers. Respect the institution of public education. This generation has to compete with students in Asia who have been selected to receive a world-class education and with European students whose education values math and science more so than its American equivalent, Obama reminded the country, so help them do it.
President Obama is right. Simply put, America cannot compete on a global scale with countries that treat teaching as a widely respected career and pour funding into education. How can American schools expect to retain excellent teachers if they do not approach teaching as the most important career in terms of ensuring American excellence?
Some people worry that America’s days as the world’s superpower are dwindling. America’s great contribution to the world is its support of innovation. The best and perhaps the only way for America to sustain innovation continually is to further education. Unfortunately, some voices in politics continue to undermine this path to a renewed place for America.
Some of the more popular political figures in America got to where they did by being patently anti-intellectual. Take Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, who continually denied even the most basic of recent scientific research. Some Democratic politicians, Obama included, have been accused of being Ivy-league educated or being overly intellectual by conservative radio and television personalities. Suddenly, being smart and well educated is a bad thing in politics.
And attitudes like these undermine the very way that America can, as Obama called it, "win the future." American innovation cannot prosper and future American pioneers cannot succeed in economics, management, entrepreneurship or even simple world leadership without strong educations. Strong educations are impossible without a new sense of respect in America for teaching and a new place in the national budget for it.