I'm not going to rant and rave about NCLB. It's been done and everything I might want to say has been said, probably much more eloquently than I could do. The idea of leaving no child behind came to mind tonight as I drove home from a class and listened to NPR. I didn't catch the whole story, but heard President Obama speaking about health care for all children. All I could think was, how is health care not as crucial or even more crucial for children than their schooling? I don't want to suggest that the quality of schools is unimportant, it clearly is. I just don't understand how we accept that so many children are without health care.
If you're looking for something more amusing than this, check out organized chaos's quick note about the reason one of my students was absent yesterday.
4 comments:
*sigh* health care is everything. however, it is quality health care that is everything. i hate that our kiddos only get to go to free clinics or the er where they are given more or less a rubber stamp of approval without anyone really looking out for their health. i know a girl at our school who got attacked by a dog and had her head and face ripped open. the family went to the er, and they only stiched up her face- they never checked for the huge, deep gashes in her hair. she came to school the next day with these deep cuts exposed. the family didn't have insurance, wasn't legal and so didn't want to push, and in a busy er i think they got what they paid for.
have you read david shiplar's the working poor? he does an incredible job in there addressing health care (and why people on welfare need more healthcare tha the rest of us due to their exposure to things in their substidized apartments, etc)
ok, enough mindless ranting for the moment.
It's a tough call, but my personal thinking is that if we teach more kids how to intelligently identify and solve problems and treat each other with respect, then those kids will have the capability to grow up and fix a lot of the world's problems. If we focus on health care, then we help some people avoid tough situations and help some people live more comfortably, but it doesn't necessarily save lives (are there kids whose parents are asking for essential medical attention for lethal problems and getting denied?).
I guess I'm saying that a lot of our problems are actual symptoms of not providing the best education we can provide, and it makes more sense to fix the problem first than fix the symptoms.
I guess I'm saying that a lot of our problems are actual symptoms of not providing the best education we can provide
The press would like you to believe this. As I watch the teachers in the building where I teach, I see highly effective teachers.
I would never suggest that we shouldn't be continually pushing to make our schools better. We should and we must.
However, I also think it is critical that children are healthy enough to learn. I don't know of any lethal issues that aren't being addressed. That said, I want kids to be able to see the board and their paper. I want kids to have teeth that will last them until adulthood. I want kids to get help for the asthma issues they face thanks to mold in their apartment or, god forbid, in their school. These issues are not lethal, but they severely impact their ability to learn. These issues impact their quality of life.
They are children. They deserve better.
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