When did it happen? When did education in the U.S. become a failing business, and why hasn't the government offered a bailout to education?
The government has offered a significantly small bailout to our failing schools, yet the bailout comes with some very thick strings attached to the funding. I find it interesting how education, the key cornerstone in a society's foundation, has the hardest time receiving funding in the U.S.
Looking At the Budget
Banks and military institutions receive their money on a platter absent of strings, while an agency that should matter the most struggles to attain funding comparable to other departments.
I went to The Budget at the whitehouse.gov website to see what kind of numbers we are working with in the U.S.
The 2011 Fiscal year budget adds up to a total 192 page pdf download. (Just under two percent of the health care reform document, so more people should be able to get through the budget.)
Here are the numbers for Education (in millions):
- 2009 -- 32,409
- 2010 -- 56,024
- 2011 -- 71,479 (proposed not approved)
- 2009 -- 636,537
- 2010 -- 688,041
- 2011 -- 718,795 (proposed not approved)
Money Matters in Defense
You know, the layout of government that tells you what branch is under what department and etcetera. While looking into how much money is being spent on war, I had to think about the whole picture and not the pieces. To prove my point, I have a basic diagram below that describes what I'm talking about.
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| All four agencies can be viewed as branches under the D.O.D with their own budget allowances. |
(Note: Any monetary disclosures regarding national intelligence in the U.S. are considered a threat to national security and are not available to the public. Just imagine the very large numbers in the billions.)
While I outlined the spending differences between education and defense above, I did not add into the defense amount the budgets for the four agencies described in my diagram above. Of course there are other agencies that have "defense" and "discretionary security" buried in their organizational charts, but the point of my research begins with education and our children.
How long will it take our government and many of the U.S. citizens to wake up and smell the gunpowder under our biggest land mine yet? The increasing failure of education in the U.S.
Please continue reading in Part II
Very informative and a great article. Thank you for your passion on education in this country. It will take people like you to wake citizens up so education reform in this country will truly happen.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the compliment. My zeal for education stems from my own selfish love of learning. I feel that when one truly embeds themselves into a focus with excitement then everyone around them will follow.
ReplyDeleteArtfully put. I did a post very similar to this about NASA vs. the Department of the Defense, and how science spending is not the huge sponge everyone thinks. The DoD beats every other agency in the budget race, by a HUGE margin. I am not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but I do wonder sometimes if this is deliberate. If we have only a comparatively few smart+ educated people, but churn out masses upon masses of barely literate people -- what are their life options? Well, JOINING THE MILITARY is a big one. Thus we keep the largest force in the world.
ReplyDeleteI have no doubt in my mind that churning "out masses upon masses of barely literate people" is definitely deliberate. Public education is an "institution" no different from prison. Prison guards (teachers) have strict uniform code and procedure (curriculum) that they must follow.
ReplyDeleteChildren get yard-time (recess) after lunch and have to be in their cells (classrooms) when the bell rings.
Apt analogy. When the public school system was developed in 1790, some people screamed "socialism!" LOL... but its uniformity over a long period was probably inevitable. But then we must back up a step and ask ourselves, "Why in the world would we create society SO complex, SO difficult to navigate, that we need a MINIMUM of 13 years of schooling to survive?" And even then, you are considered "only a high school graduate." It's a recipe for always making sure we have a mediocre working class for whom military life looks like an "opportunity". Don't forget, the DoD budget also includes Veteran benefits, pensions and health care. The whole lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteOh no I didn't forget about Veteran affairs. I reviewed the entire budget proposal for this year and the budgets for the past decade as well.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot to write about, but it becomes a matter of scope and time. My next post is about High Fructose Corn Syrup, the corn industry and genetically modified crops.
Thanks for the great feedback! I'm really enjoying these comments.