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For a Proper Education Start with Early Childhood EducationA proper education begins at home with good parentingskills and positive parenting that enhance emotions and learning. However, restricting our analysis to just the field of academics, then we find a good education begins with early childhood education. Proper education emphasizes early childhood education because of its long lasting effects on students. For example, early childhood education students were less likely to be retained a grade or placed in special education. They were more likely to get a better job and earn more money. Furthermore, participants in early childhood education were less likely to break the law. What's more, proper education at an early age, not only improves impoverished children's chances for success in school, it improves all children's chances for success in school. Teachers employed in public sponsored early childhood education programs proved better educated, earned higher salaries, and had a lower turnover rate than those employed in private programs. Proper education in the public sector begins with early childhood education. The main problem is that only 75% of the nation's eligible children presently participate in this program. Given the prediction that early childhood education can decrease the retention rates of middle class students by 25%-50%, it is important more children enroll. Proper education in early childhood would make a big difference to the one-fourth of all U.S. children under age six living in poverty and to the three-fifth of three and four year old children whose mothers work outside the home. Only 20% of these three and four year olds are presently enrolled in an early childhood education program, like Head Start. Hence, good early childhood education is win-win for both well off and poor students. Main points regarding proper education in early childhood: 1. Early childhood education may be the most important grade in school. Therefore, make sure your child attends. 2. Early childhood education participants got better jobs, earned more pay, and were less likely to break the law. 3. Both rich and poor benefit from early childhood education as demonstrated by lower retention rates. Many of the challenges to proper education appear to be known. For example, more parents need to be involved with their children's learning at earlier ages. In part this is transpiring through early childhood education programs. Moreover, parents are learning to parent their children better by learning positive parenting skills, which engender positive emotions that facilitate learning. Teachers appear committed to improving the welfare of their students and are better trained than ever before. Nonetheless, proper education is challenged due to the fact that computer-video games and television interfere with learning, not only by distracting children from learning, but by creating increased negative feelings like aggression and anxiety that interfere with learning. Apparently the younger the age children first begin watching television, the worse the problem. It interferes with their attention span as well. Dr. Joseph Mercola lists "20 Activities to do With Your Kids Other Than Watch TV." What may be the biggest impediment to proper education is the federal government's lack of support for public education. For example, their failure to warn parents and control corporate television has led to the devastating toll television has taken on our children. Second, unlike after World War II, government's lack of inspirational and cooperative leadership, regarding public education, has condemned the U.S. educational system to a gradual decline. Instead of listening to teachers and working with them, the government appears to have created an adversarial environment, by the No Child Left Behind Act for example, that directly interferes with the teacher's ability to educate our children effectively. Many educators believe this program is destined for failure. Third, government added to the problem of proper education of our children through the mandating of standardized tests that emphasize rote learning, a type of learning based on mass memorization and teaching to pass the test. Such rote tasks, when done to excess, create negative feelings like boredom, fear and anxiety in students. These feelings are known to impede learning, after all; who wants to learn when it's boring and stressful? A fourth way it interfered with a proper education is by decreasing the funding to our children's schools. School districts occupied by lower income students tend to score lower than higher income school districts on the standardized tests it mandates. The No Child Left Behind Act punishes lower scoring, poorer school districts by cutting off their funding. Thus, poorer students, the ones who need money for more teachers and resources the most, the same ones who are, often, already under pressure because their parents are least able to help them out, are penalized the most. However, even, relatively, high scoring better school districts can be penalized. For example, if they do not improve significantly on past scores, they may be penalized. These penalties, also, come in the form of decreased funding. The federal government's disinterest in the proper education of our children is further revealed by the fact that, at times, it's refused to fund school districts that passed their No Child Left Behind Act performance tests, claiming they had no money. However, they eagerly sought and found money to fight the Iraq War. Proper education of our children is, obviously, not a priority for the U.S. government as it once was after WWII. Hence, it appears the federal government no longer cares for America's future: its children! So we must ask, if the funding is not going to proper education, where is it going? In other words, what does the federal government care for? Clearly the number one priority of our government leadership is funding the military-congressional-industrial-complex. Interestingly, the decreased emphasis on the education of our children began to occur several years after President Dwight Eisenhower warned about the "unwarranted" political power by the military-industrial-complex. In regard to military influence, The "No Child Left Behind" Act gave military recruiters the same access to schools as higher education recruiters. What's more, they have rights to student information without informing their parents. A few years later, President John Kennedy, who planned to terminate the Viet Nam War by 1965 and create a peace time economy that would have benefited education, was assassinated. By mid 1970s, middle class income had begun to drop and continues to do so to the present day. In fact, one income families of a generation ago, at the end of the day, retained $1,500 more discretionary income than two income median-earning median-spending families of today. The downward spiral of our children's education seems to have followed this trend. Declining middle class incomes forced both parents to work in order to maintain household incomes. With both working, however, this meant parents spent less time with their children. Previously, the non-working parent could see that kids behaved responsibly after school, for example, did their homework and did not get involved in unhealthy activity like drug and alcohol abuse. Because of declining middle class incomes and the necessity for both parents to work, the family has been all but destroyed. This is evidenced in the fact that parents have less than four minutes per week of meaningful conversation with their children, that the majority of 4-6 year old children would rather spend time with the television than their dads that, due to lack of parental oversight, kids watch 1500 hours of TV per year versus spending 900 hours time in school each year, that 66% of families do not eat dinner together that teen rates of alcohol-drug abuse and suicide have escalated tremendously. Proper education requires sufficient funding and well paid teachers. Male teacher's pay is 60% lower than other college educated men. In 1940 it was over 3% higher. Women teachers are paid 14% less than other college educated women. Discretionary non-defense spending declined 38% between 1980 and 1999. This under investment has resulted in declining scholastic achievement compared to other advanced countries. The U.S., the richest country in the world, ranked 24 out of 29 in combined mathematical literacy and 15 out of 27 in combined reading literacy. Regarding education, the lack of effective government leadership is not a political issue. It's the responsibility of both major parties. America's future is its children. America's rise to greatness had to do with putting its children first. It's argued that government gets in the way and is the problem behind educational problems. This is, obviously, false since it was government education that converted a mostly illiterate U.S. to one of the most literate nations on earth. All good parents put their children first. Both major parties appear to have failed in this regard by placing politics before our children. The proof of this is the fact that one party attempts to pose specious arguments about the U.S. government being incapable of leading education properly, when, in fact, as already mentioned, it's proven, it can. The other party, in the meantime, failed to use government and continue to successfully lead public education as had transpired in the past. Hence, what we have is a failure of political leadership, not a failure of public education. The No Child Left Behind Act is merely another symptom of this lack of leadership problem since it never should have come before Congress for approval if the opposing party had done its job, in the first place, and continued giving proper education the high priority it once did in the past. Before education can be improved, parents must become aware of the problems. Some of the reasons proper education has suffered are due to the following: 1. Education is no longer given the high priority, by the federal government, it once enjoyed. How else can one interpret the decreased government spending on education, as a percentage of gross domestic product, compared to a generation ago, and the decrease in teacher's salaries compared to what teachers were paid in the 1940s? 2. Lack of effective, cooperative government leadership, as for example, evidenced in the No Child Left Behind Act. Government should be working with teachers, not against them to create effective educational plans. 3. Worsening boredom and negative feelings by children, concerning their educational experience. The "No Child Left Behind Act" made an often, boring, educational environment worse. It has forced teachers to organize their teaching around teaching to pass the test, which emphasizes rote learning. Rote learning is boring and creates negative feelings in children that interfere with learning. This is not proper education. 4. Declining middle class incomes relative to the 1970s led to a decrease in proper education since parents had to work, instead of making themselves available at home to help their children. 5. Computer-video games and television are significantly interfering with children's education by creating negative feelings that interfere with learning, decreasing attention span, and taking away from both learning and normal play time. These educational challenges are not impossible to fix. The real question is do Americans have the vision to see that our future lies in our children and their receiving a first rate education? What must be done: 1. The problem of lack of government support of two working parent families and what that causes (increased teen drug and alcohol abuse, lack of parent-child communication, and destruction of the family unit) must be publicized and the present policy reversed. 2. Working families and their children must be made a priority again like they were after WWII. If we did it before we can do it again. 3. The argument that government is ineffective when it comes to improving education is a false one as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. government proved itself highly effective in improving U.S. education during the first half of the twentieth century. Therefore, since government leadership has proven itself effective in the past, the problem must be that present government leadership is ineffective. 4. Note it is in the interests of the well off, as well as the poor, to see that proper public education once again becomes our government's top priority because both benefit as noted by lower retention rates of the wealthier students. Importantly, the wealthier students will have less exposure to drugs and alcohol, which they are vulnerable to, once public education returns to the high priority it once had. 5. The present government leadership on both sides of the aisle must be altered to one that proves itself effective in the educational realm. The No Child Left Behind Act evidences a failure of proper government leadership, in regards to education, because it directly interferes with student learning and is counterproductive to cooperative work with teachers who are the real education experts. 6. Specious political arguments and those that espouse them to achieve their political agenda should not be tolerated; after all this is our children and our future that is at stake here. As far as education is concerned, we did it before. We can do it again. Are you ready to get on board? The choice is ours.
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