Priority #1: Education

Poor CNN. Now that the election is over, it seems like they have nothing else to talk about, except the elections aftermath. Regardless, one of their new programs sounds like they're going to feature viewers expressing what they think Obama's number one priority should be.

I have one. I don't think, with all that's going on in the world, that it will be the number one problem the government will try to tackle. I don't think it was ever the first priority of any American government, ever. But it's my number one worry. It's education.

Of course, I'm not worried about my education. I'm enrolled at the seventeenth best liberal arts college in America. 17? You may say. Yes, I know. I should've gotten better grades. But I believe that I am intelligent. In elementary school, I always was 99th percentile on the skill tests we took. I managed to get an A+ on papers from an English teacher who never gave out A+s. I wrote a novel. I titrated.

That was my education. I am now an articulate, intelligent individual. And I have excellent teachers and an excellent school system to thank for that. But America as a whole isn't looking too hot. 66% of kids graduate from high school. High school. Which I thought was mandatory. It's not. And 33% of kids peace out without ever finishing, without ever receiving a diploma representing a completion of the most basic form of education. Do I blame these kids, though? How can I. Very rarely, I think, is it their fault for not being able to make it to the finish. Parents, maybe, are at fault, more often. But schools themselves push away students by their complete lack of basic services and their poor teachers, with poor curriculum.

Education is important. Education is what produced the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. America's founding fathers were, above all else, scholars. I think that everyone in this country should be able to, or even forced to, at least gain a basic education. The American job market needs educated people. If we are simply content with people taking grunt jobs because they are not qualified for anything else, well then, we should be content with becoming a third world country. Not to mention, the health benefits of higher education. From lower pregnancy rates to lower addiction rates to nicotine, the more you know, the healthier you are.

I can't stress how important education is, for individuals, for this country. But I personally feel that we are running out of time. In about ten years, with any luck, I'll start having kids. If this country is unable and unwilling to give them a good education, I don't know what to do. I see a country without education as a country in chaos. And I don't want to have to raise a family in that.

Also home schooling is lame.