Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Budget Take 1
« Protesting Thunder | Main | Democratic Primary for US Senate »Education officials across the state are warning that the spending plan passed last week by the General Assembly may leave schools facing wide-ranging financial difficulties.Kentucky Education Commissioner Jon Draud released a budget analysis yesterday that said funding levels for education allotted in the budget don't provide school districts with the resources they need.
Draud, a former Republican member of the state House, said Kentucky needs additional revenue to handle its financial woes.
"This is not so much about financial support as it is about a philosophy that children are important and that their education should be our primary concern," Draud said in a statement.
Give me a break. Every year it seems like we pour more and more into the money pit that is called education. Every year we seem to get less and less for our money. Yet the educators always seem to need more. How much money does it take to educate a child? You need a teacher, school books, and a classroom. Everything else is unnecessary.
Learning is a simple process. The teacher provides guidance and the students work at the subject until they begin internalizing the knowledge. Wow, that wasn't very complicated. It isn't exactly rocket science. We definitely don't need fancy new fangled methodologies of teaching. It seems like education has turned into one giant infomercial. You can lose 50 pounds in two weeks. You can learn better using some cool new methodology. Both are bogus.
Mental education is like strength training. You have to work hard at it. But if you do then you will see the results. When I have to learn a new tool or programming language what do I do? I get a book (teacher) that provides me with the basic principles of the subject. Next, I spend time working with the tool until I master it. It takes time and hard work. There is no magic short cut. You can't play around all spring and summer and expect to plant and harvest a crop all in the fall. It doesn't work that way. Educating our children is no different. And it shouldn't take a gazillion dollars to do it.
Heck, I could hire a teacher and rent out a small room and have my own 1 classroom school and charge half of what we pay per child and provide a solid education based on hard work. If that is true, why do the educators need all of this extra money to "educate" or children. Now, I know that you need extra money for special education and for teaching delinquents, but it can't cost THAT much extra.
Personally, I think the educators in this state need to go back to first principles of education and simplify the process to reduce the amount of money we spend on education. Instead of trying to throw more money at the problem maybe we should double our efforts at making the kids work harder. Such an idea shouldn't take more money, and in the process we may find out that kids might actually learn more.
