The summer is a time for adventure. Travel is something that I love to do, and something I make time for at the end of every school year. This summer I visited Europe, and traveled to several places in the US, but I got a glimpse of the future. I got to see what things will be like in 15 years. I had just returned from my trip to New Orleans, still realing from all the good food and drink that slowed me down to a crawl. I had intended for the next day to be detox. I had adopted a vegitarian life style for a couple of days to try and account for the wonderful food that New Orleans has. I woke up in the future. I woke up and I hurt all over wonderin.g if it was still just aftereffects of gourging myself on New Orlean's cuisine. I looked around to a different room, and found out that that nothing was how I left it. Panic begin to rise as a voice called out that breakfast was almost ready. The voice that rung out was my wife, and the panic began to settle a bit. Until, I realized that my wife never cooks breakfast.
At that time the TV switched on, and the much older face of Dwayne "the rock" Johnson peered out into my beadroom. He began to talk and on the bottom of the screen it said president Johnson. I laughed out loud. He stated that the country's debt was out of control and that all 50 Trillion of it would need to be dealt with soon. The Rock then told me about how the debt was going to be fixed by the benefactor of the world and the owner of the moon China. The news spoke of how our education system was getting help from Samalia and India due to our low literacy rate, and the canadian border had been sealed to prevent people from moving into Canada for undocumented work.
I turned off the news in disbelief, and picked up a thin flexible peice of glass that was by the bed. Amazon Kindle Xtreme raced across it's transparent screen. The date, July 20th 2026, flashed on the screen and then settled itself in the upper corner. As a microphone appeared on the middle of the screen and asked for what kind of news or sports I was interested in. My voice shaky I stated I wanted education news. The education section of the news paper showed that teacher pay had been lowered again due to the fact that it was not acceptable for teachers to make the same as housekeepers and lawn service crews. An article caught my attention that stated that the state had again increased the class size to 40.
The picture looked fairly bleak. Trash was on the streets. Caesar a monkey had successfully become the first non-human governor of California (they are so progressive). What I found most horrifing was the fact that the national pass time has become NASCAR. Snookie was a senator from California who was fighting for later bar hours for the entire country. The world was indeed a bleak place. After reading that bit of information my heart started to ache and I woke up safe and sound here at my house in good old 2011.
Now of course all of this is a dream, or a really bad attempt at humor, but there is a point. This summer has seen the debt ceiling being raised, and has also seen the reduction of even more teachers from the classroom. China has really started to play it's hand as a dominant figure, as jobs are outsourced over seas. My point is that education is a founding principal of our nation. Our budget may be set, but the fight for the future continues. Education is a tool to be used to further a society. Without it the society seems to falter and fold. The Ancient empires of the past have all had one thing in common. They were overrun by people that were better adapted to survive and thrive in that world. They allowed complacency to rule them, and in the process were taken over. Our fight is different from theirs. We do not have to worry about armed invaders coming in and taking our homes. Instead we have to worry about us being competitive in the job market. Our economy continuing to grow as it has since the end of World War II. We stand at a crossroads for our country. We have multiple problems to face, but how we tackle them will be our legacy.
Until Next Week (I will be back for one more pre-school blog and then we are back to our regularly scheduled program),
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
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