Universal Access

I read the speech Education and Opportunity for All, written for Secretary Spelling at a UNESCO conference. You could sure tell it was written by a government official for NCLB because of all the positive comments about it.  It almost made me believe that NCLB was working, until I remembered all the students that can’t do 2 times 2 in their head.  Our goals are for UNESCO is for : “universal primary education by 2015″; a 50 percent expansion in adult literacy; improved quality as well as access; gender equality; and opportunity for “excluded and marginalized” populations.”A tall order for a country that can’t even take care of it’s own problems, now we are going to cure the world. Since we are all aware of how wonderful NCLB is then the following quote won’t be news to you:Its goals — every child learning at grade level in reading and math by 2014, a quality teacher in every classroom, special attention for students once ignored and left behind – complement UNESCO’s good work.Ok, but as far as the Educational Access to all is concerned, it is a forward movement and a step in the right direction.  As the speech says, “earning depends on learning”.  With 90% of the jobs requiring a post secondary endevor of some type, we need to focus on learning for all no matter what it is.  It is a shame that foreigners come over and get degrees in our colleges and take them back to their homeland for their economy can prosper and their people can be educated from it, while the facilities are here, but not enough Americans are takeing advantage of them.  (the last part is just my opinion, which may not be accurate, I know that is hard to believe, but true).   I think that we have our hearts in the right place and we are trying to do the right thing, I just don’t believe we are going about it the right way. Bush increased educational research by 60% (who knows what the original is because 60% of nothing is still nothing, but that is the sceptic math person in me wondering why they didn’t give figures instead of percents) and I believe they are thinking they are going to find a miracle way to teach our students by the following quote:“We don’t yet know where the research may lead. But we are eager to share our findings with the world. Educational access — filling an empty chair with a willing student — is necessary, but not sufficient. We must insist on quality. UNESCO’s 2005 Global Monitoring Report demonstrated its importance. Children must leave school with the skills to survive and thrive in a knowledge-based world”    AMEN !! with that being said, I agree, but HOW!  I don’t think NCLB is moving us in that direction. We are donating lots of money to other countries to educate their students and giving the world educational access the best that we can, but I feel we need to perfect our skill at home first before working on the rest of the world.  I  feel that we are letting our “underprivileged” students fall through the cracks by having NCLB because if all can’t have it, none will have it.  We need to have an attitude of,” if our students need it, all students should get it”.  And you can quote me on that.  We looked into laptops for all, but we know some can’t afford to replace it if it is lost, stolen, or damaged….so should we not get them because all can’t afford them….or should we help those in need and allow the students the advantage of having a laptop that might otherwise not ever get to use one.  I know that internet service isn’t available in all homes, but there are enough hotspots to allow low income students to walk to a library or a wifi location to get on to do some homework or surfing of the internet.  Well, I feel very passionate as you can tell about his topic and I apologize for getting all my problems out in one blog, but I can’t help my opinions and NCLB is beginning to get on my last nerve as it is a lot of teachers that want to teach.  This article relates to the readings in , Toward Digital Equity;  Bridging the divide in Education, because it focuses on bringing education and technology to the world not just Americans.  I do feel that we need to work on getting the world on the world wide web; especially low economy countries.  Having the Internet is a cheaper way to educate yourself than the alternatives of college, traveling, or professional development.  Don’t get me wrong it would be a better education, but if you don’t have to money to do it, it is an alternative to becoming more educated.  I don’t know anyone that does research anymore in a library unless they are on the computer.  I feel that technology is knowledge with all the information out there, we can do anything.  So, educational access in this article was talking about education for other countries. This is something we have to do eventually, but I feel we need to work on educating our own first before worrying about the rest of the world.