Sunday, October 19, 2008

Defying Gravity: Trickle-Down Economics

There is a good article in the Baltimore Sun on the glories of trickle-down economics. Read it here.

Now I'm diverging a bit, but if only reporters would dig deeply and connect the dots between disaster capitalism and the enormity of big business efforts to undermine and discredit public education so they may have excuse to jump in and take over with their wondrous market solutions.

Child well-being has long been neglected in this nation and a crisis has been allowed to develop. Millions of children lack health insurance and millions are abused and neglected. Millions have parents who are drug/alcohol addicted. Scores are left alone to fend for themelves after school in crime-infested neighborhoods. About 2 million have parents in prison and 13 million live in poverty. We rank 20th out of 21 wealthy nations in child well-being. As to poverty, we rank dead last among 25 wealthy nations.

How convenient for politicians and the ruling elite who control them to wag fingers of blame and ridicule at public schools and teachers because achievement gaps exist. It diverts attention from our nation's collective and exceedingly costly failure to take care of our most vulnerable children. While children's most fundamental life needs go unmet, testing and more testing and more "standards and accountability" from our schools and teachers is always the refrain. That's the ticket. More of the same. Such vision!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you know the first official response to abused children came from the Humane Society? There was nothing else in place to protect children; there still isn't much done, even though millions have been thrown at the same old problems.

tauna said...

No, I didn't know that. I'd like to read more about it.

Thanks for stopping by and contributing!