Wednesday, April 19, 2006

The Mouth Giveth, and the Hand Taketh Away

Well, I'm back after a much-t00-long absence. Call it laziness. Call it a lack of inspiration. Call it anomie. Hell, you can call it Bob if you'd like. I have reasons. Not good ones, but reasons nonetheless. But that's not what I want to talk about today.

Let's talk about money. In this case, federal money for education. After taking a quick look at the budget figures for the Department of Education, I noticed something that really isn't that surprising. The Federal Education budget is shrinking. Still. Again. The first cuts in nearly a decade came last year. This year's budget does the same thing. Again, I'm not surprised. If there's one thing that I've consistently found to be true, it's this: Politicians mostly talk about education in order to pimp children so they can build their political images. As I've already suggested in other entries, mostly "education reform" is about looking busy and taking up conceptual space. Most folks think, "Well, at least they're doing something about education." Unfortunately, if these people who are "doing something" did the same thing to, say, their ludicrously oversized SUVs as they are doing to education... Well, let's just picture that, shall we? Think of a Hummer H2. A hulking monstrosity. A gigantic, fake, piece of shit (much like the Preznit). Okay, now picture yourself. Picture yourself with a sledgehammer. With a cutting torch. With other various implements of destruction and construction. Let's "reform" that bitch, shall we?

First of all, given that vocational education is soooo pre-9/11 thinking, let's go ahead and cut that shit out with our torch. Think of it as, oh, the driveshaft of our H2. You never really think of why it's there. It's hard to see unless you get under the vehicle, but it's really fucking hard to get to work without it. Besides, the military offers so many vocational choices! You poor, stupid bastards can go ahead and join up. I hear they need lots of people, and there are recruiting offices nearby. Okay, the driveshaft is gone. Let's replace it with one of those magnetic "support the troops" stickers on the back of the H2, okay? What next?

Educational technology grants. They help us figure out whether all this reformin' is doing the job. After all, there's really no need to know whether "reform" is hurting or helping things. We'll just pretend we know. Don't you know that education is a faith-based exercise anyway? Reality is just a dodge anyway. We'll just do a whole lot of magical thinking. Clap our hands. Pray for rain. Things will just turn out right anyway, right? For this, we'll need some wire cutters, and maybe a prybar. We're gonna rip out the brainbox. We're gonna take out all the warning lights. Now if there's a problem, we won't know about it. Then we won't have to deal with it. We can just keep on truckin'! Next!

GEAR Up! That's the program designed to help low-income students get into and succeed in college. Gears? Well, those are in the transmission. Surely that will have to go next. But not all of it, no not all. Let's just take first gear, and maybe second. Then we'll slap that baby back in. Some might say we need those gears. That it's hard to get going without them. Bullshit! If you can't get moving, that's your own problem. You should have been born on a downslope. It's nobody's fault that your parents didn't succeed. That's life kid. Maybe you can get some of your homies to give you a push start. Or maybe... Hey! The military! That's a great place to get your education started. 1-800- GOARMY. All the commercials say so, don't they? Now what?

Arts in Education (check), counseling (check), state grants for incarcerated youth (check), civic education (check). Let's just call these, collectively, all the things that make the H2 experience prettier and more comfortable than the military version of the Hummer. So, let's scuff the chrome and paint, bust out a window or two, tear out the stereo (but leave the speakers), rip out the leather and padding on the seats, and smash all the lights and turn signals. Now it looks like shit, is uncomfortable as hell, and you can't even listen to the radio. Plus, not even we can tell where we're going any more. Shit, we're only getting started and we already need a mechanic. Now there's an idea...

Let's make it as difficult as possible to get teachers to teach these kids! Let's cut student loans for teachers who want to improve themselves. Let's hack out teacher recruiting for high-need areas (The poor don't need education anyway. Anybody can carry a rifle.). Less money for work-study in college. Cut scholarships. There ya go. Hmm, what have we done this time. Well, we just pummelled the damned mechanic in the head with our handy dandy sledgehammer, we cut the hands off the mechanic's assistant with our cutting torch. We quit running ads to hire more mechanics. We cut mechanic training programs. Done, done, and done. Boy, this H2 doesn't run. It looks like shit too. I sure as hell don't want to ride in it. What else could we possibly do?

Oh, I know. Let's go ahead and cut the money for the "safe and drug free schools" programs. [Note: These are more or less bullshit anyway, but we've heard so much about how great they are for so long, well, I just figured I'd point out that they, all of a sudden... well... aren't needed or something.]. Sweet. Now we'll let some drunk asshole drive this bitch, okay? If he can get it moving, of course. And if not, well, he can just shoot at random passers-by.

So far, I think we all agree, we've really done a number on this H2. Truth be told, I've only talked about a few of the proposed cuts. There's more. Much more. But there's also an underlying problem: That of priorities.

Looking at the budget forecast for FY 2007 (see above), let's compare defense and educational spending. The entire Department of Education will receive $64.5 billion dollars. States will also appropriate money, but not nearly as much as they get from Uncle Sugar. The Department of Defense will receive $504.8 billion (that's half a trillion to you and me). That money does not include any additional appropriations for, say, wars with Iraq, Afghanistan, and (potentially) Iran. Did I mention that the military recruiters are looking for a little help here? The Department of Fatherland er, um, Homeland Security, which includes the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Immigration and Customs, among other things, is kind of a mixed bag. Overall, it's supposed to decline a bit. However, The actual amount of money spent for FY 2005 was $101.2 billion. The budget for FY 2005 was $31.4 billion. So, we spend three times what was budgeted, through additional appropriations for disasters, emergencies, and other additions to spending not in the original budget. Given that, the actual spending for Defense and Fatherland (why do I keep doing that?) Homeland Security will probably be much higher, given that additional appropriations for terrorist threats, hurricanes, etcetera have not been factored into the budget forecast.

Somehow, I'm not so sure that The Department of Education will receive such largesse from our friends in the Congress. Fuck the kids? (check) Destroy the future? (double check) What's next? Wait for Armageddon? Yeah. That's the ticket. Let God bail us out. As for me, I'll do my best to vote these fucking idiots out of office come November, and do it again in 2008. They are up to no good.

They talk and talk and talk, and say nothing of substance. They lie, they obfuscate, and they fuck the rest of us. Here's an example I came across just today:

Talk to the Unitary Hand

Wed Apr 19, 2006 at 03:17:01 AM PDT

One of these things is not like the other:

[WaPo] President Bush told Montgomery County students yesterday that math and science are "cool subjects" and warned that the country would lose jobs overseas unless more funding is devoted to the disciplines.

One of these things just doesn't belong:

[Link] Student activists joined 35th District Assembly member Pedro Nava and 23rd District Congresswoman Lois Capps in front of the UCen yesterday to speak out against recent federal cuts to education. ... "The president says that higher education is key," Capps said. "That he would pass a bill that cuts $12 billion - the greatest [cut] in history - it's hypocrisy."

Checking local job offers, starting pay for a math and science teacher with the expertise to teach pre-calculus and calculus is about 29,000 dollars a year. Starting pay at a number of corporations requiring a similar level of technical proficiency and four year degree in software/engineering, or technology oriented business & management ranges between 46,000 and 56,000 a year -- with the business majors making the most by the way. The firm with the most job listings and best pay range makes jet skis ...


Remember how we were promised that high tech was America's future? Remember how the "reformers" freaked out about how bad American students were in science and math. Could these be the same people who are now outsourcing a lot of those tech jobs to India. Software code is very easy to ship. Indian students are just as smart and work for cheaper. Hell, a good many of them went to American universities. High tech's a sucker bet. So, get a business degree. Learn to play golf. Join a frat. Learn to schmooze. If you're not too poor. If you go to a good high school. If your grades don't suck. If you have a home life that allows you to do so. If you're not black or brown. The military pays less, but, hey, at least they're hiring. America's plutocracy gets richer from oil and defense and security (oh my!). America's poor get nothing. Sometimes they get dead.

Sela. Pause and reflect upon this.

--The Reverend Doctor