Other opinions always interest me, especially those about education. A case in point was an article I read in the Indiana Daily Student by Brock Levin. He has some conservative views on education that are incorrect.
Levin believes government money is most wasteful when it is spent on education. He compares the problem with education to a mother giving a child a lollipop when he begins to cry in public.
When he finishes it, he begins to cry again and people begin to talk about the mother being a bad parent. Afraid of the public, she gives her child one lollipop after another. Levin says the happiness the child gets with each lollipop lessens with each one.
Here, the child is the school system, and the mother is a politician fearing the next election. The lollipops are the money, and the talking people are liberal Democrats. So, Levin believes the improvement of education is reduced with each dollar spent.
He goes on to say schools don't care, but they simply want to receive as much money as possible to use as they please. The difference between the full use of each dollar and the actual use of each dollar is what makes up the waste.
He also believes Democrats don't see this at all. He says Democrats are "like liberals. They get an idea in their head, they come up with a goal and then they act before thinking the processes through. In this case, they want to improve education by putting more and more money into the school system."
Levin implies Democrats are just a bunch of crazy liberals who don't think before they act. Too bad he doesn't back up his ridiculous statement with any proof.
He keeps complaining about education and goes on to say he has a plan to solve our education problems. I'll call this the Levin Success Plan.
First, he wants the government to set more stringent standards with teacher evaluations. If I am not mistaken, teachers already go through evaluations.
Next, students should be forced to take standardized tests to reflect the quality of their education. I wish he had gone into more depth on this step because I don't understand how this is going to help.
The standardized tests I've taken haven't really proved much in the way of the quality of my education. Education is different for every student, and that makes it hard to gain facts from standardized testing.
Finally, the Levin Success Plan calls for reducing the pool of eligible teachers.
"We should no longer pay people to teach simply because they have been there for a long time," Levin said. "If you don't pass your evaluations, you're out. Where 1,000 people are eligible to teach now, the new standards will reduce this number to 10 people. The more highly skilled workers will need to be enticed to teach, so their salaries will need to be increased."
I think he really wants to take the money the government gives to education and put it into teachers' salaries - well, the 10 salaries left after his evaluations.
Most teachers aren't paid enough. They spend a lot of time outside the classroom preparing and spending time and money for their jobs. But I hope they do it because they like their jobs and not because they have to.
I just wonder how the Levin Success Plan will deal with the classroom sizes once there are only 10 teachers. That seems to be a major problem he doesn't discuss, even though he describes his plan as "the right way to put money into education."
Levin goes on to say there are no other ways to put money into education.
"Any other way is stupid or liberal" Levin said. "The two are interchangeable."
Good job, Levin - way to be open-minded.
Write to Courtney at sturgeoncourtney@hotmail.com
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