School Is For Academics

Friday Night Lights is a fictional account of a Texas highschool football team. Some but not much of the show portrays the students’ lives in the classroom and in the school halls. What is evident from the show is that football is an important part of the highschool experience, at least for the players and possibly the cheerleading squad. While the show is a fictional account, the impact of school sports in actual schools is real, and much of it is adverse for the majority of students. It is time to reconsider whether sports should remain part of public education institutions.

A minority of students in either a highschool or university actually partake in extracurricular sports; however, all students are impacted. The after school games are scheduled for times when travel to and from the event will put the child home at a "reasonable" hour. The academic schedule is designed to prevent the athletes from missing too much class time. The end result is that classes start earlier in the day then they would if the sports schedule was not accounted for. Students who are highschool and university age have brains that do not function fully until later in the morning, yet due in large part to the athletic schedule, schools start at 7:30 a.m. or earlier. Thus the first hour and a half to two hours of school are unproductive because the students’ brains are not yet awake. Worse yet, a number of students throughout the nation have a bus ride of an hour or more, which requires that they get out of bed before 6:00 a.m. to prepare for school and catch the public school bus. Requiring that students get up this early is detrimental to their learning abilities. This basis alone is sufficient to justify removing sports from school or at least adjusting the academic schedule to be less beholden to the athletic schedule.

Here in New Jersey schools are funded through property taxes. At least one half of a resident’s property tax goes to the public school districts. A not insubstantial amount of a school budget goes to the funding of extracurricular sports. By removing this budget item a number of books and possibly additional teachers could be paid for. Again, a minority of students are directly benefitted by school sports in comparison to the number of students in any given school; however, all students are having a reduction in the number of teachers, books and quality of education materials they receive due to the athletic budget.

Academics suffer as a result of sports. There are a number of incidents throughout the country whereby a budget battle erupts within a board of education or a budget is voted down by the electorate and libraries, arts, music and other classes are cut from the budget in a supposed attempt to balance the budget. Rarely does the athletic budget get cut. Such acts by board of educations are purely political. They believe that a budget will pass if the electorate believes that the alternative is cutting academic programs.

The United States lags far behind other first world nations in the quality of education that public school students are receiving. One thing that needs to be addressed is how to raise the quality. By requiring schools to be for education opposed to having a major focus on sports as currently exists, the US education quality will rise. By starting classes at hours that are more conducive to a student’s education abilities and funding education opposed to sports, this can be achieved.

Alternate Path

Report after report concludes that the middle-class is being squeezed out of being able to afford college costs. As previously argued in this blog, (Middle Class Tax; Personal Savings Rate; The Lost Generation) much of this debt is a result of less governmental assistance for students to pay for college and a shift from need-based assistance to loans. Coupled with a 375% increase in tuition and fees between 1982 and 2005, the financial shift has had a disproportionate impact on the middle and lower class. With such staggering numbers and no change in sight, its time for the marketplace establish new options.

Colleges do not produce students who are ready to work in the marketplace. Prior to Airborne Express being purchased by another company it had a fairly large computer programming department. Whenever it hired a new computer programer who had recently graduated from college the company wrote off the person’s first year salary because that person was going to spend more time in training, at a significant cost to the company, than performing actual work. If the private company is burdened with training the employee, then there is little or no difference between the current student and someone without a college education that has some basic background in computer programming.

The marketplace needs to establish an alternative to the overly priced college education that does not prepare someone for work. An intense two year program in computer programming which is conducted in cooperation with local and national businesses to determine a curriculum, that is cheaper than the current college tuition, will be better for the students and businesses than the current system. In addition to providing the students the actual necessary tools, not just the ones some academic thinks is necessary, by having business connections and cooperation will assist the students in establishing connections with possible employers and creates a greater chance of the students becoming employed.

This educational model will benefit all. The students will have less costs since the education process will be for fewer years and the business community will benefit since it will not have to retrain new employees coming from these institutions. It is time to reevaluate the educational process and start preparing students for the work they are going to do upon graduation instead of preparing them for a life of student loan debt.

Class Warfare

For years we heard the Republicans explain that President Clinton was passing balanced budgets because there was a Republican Congress. However, now that there is a GOP dominated government – White House, Congress and Supreme Court – we see the most fiscally irresponsible government this nation has had in generations. Their actions show that the balanced budgets of the 1990s was due solely to the Democratic leadership of President Clinton and had nothing to do with a Republican Congress.

In 1993, President Clinton passed an economic package by a single vote in the Senate, which was cast by Vice President Gore. From that point on, the government was on a defined economic plan that over the course of five years resulted in balance budgets being submitted to the Congress and budget surpluses being established. The fiscal discipline extended to President Clinton vetoing irresponsible bills such as the repeal the Estate Tax. President Clinton vetoed the bill after it was delivered to the White House by a farmer on a tractor. The GOP argued that it is the farmers and small business owners who were hurt by the Estate Tax, yet despite this argument neither the farming lobby nor the GOP could show one farmer who lost his farm due to the tax. It was just a give away to the rich, and President Clinton did the responsible thing by vetoing it.

In contrast the House of Representatives, among other things, passed a $50 billion spending cut package. The spending cuts include reducing funding for food stamps, student loan subsidies, farmer subsidies, child care assistance, and medicare funding. The Senate passed a $60 billion tax cut package, most of these tax cuts were for the nation’s wealthy. These bills as a whole required the poor and middle class to sacrifice their well-being for the sole benefit of the rich. Ultimately, it will be the poor and middle-class who will have to pay the large deficits that will result since the rich are on track to pay no taxes whatsoever.

The biggest disappointment with these actions is that it was the government that created the middle class, and now it is the government that is going to destroy the middle class. After World War II, the GI Bill was created. Tens of thousands of soldiers where able to go to school when they returned from Europe and the Pacific. Also, the government created programs for veterans to obtain affordable mortgages so they could purchase their first homes. Through programs like these, the vets became the first solid middle class this nation had ever had.

Since WW II, the middle class has relied upon the government to allow it to continue to exist. Access to college through student loans, PELL grants and other financing mechanisms has allowed the middle class to send their children to college. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been integral in ensuring that interest rates would consistently be low enough and stable enough for the middle class to get mortgages, and the one tax shelter the middle class has access to is the tax deduction for mortgage interest - this is a tax deduction that a panel has recommended having removed from the tax code because it gives too much money to too many people.

All of this assistance will soon be gone due to the GOP’s actions. When the assistance disappears so will the core of the middle class. Additionally, there will be unsustainable deficits left in their wake and those who used to make up the middle class will have the burden of paying off the deficits which destroyed their livelihoods in the first place. Ultimately, there will not be enough money to reduce the debt; therefore, there will not be enough money to reestablish the middle class either. If the GOP is left in control of the government, the only ones who will suffer will be those who once thought they were living a comfortable life.

Predictions

Last March I commented that the Democrats could not take over Congress because the electorial math did not work out - there just were not enough competative seats for the Democrats to get fifteen new seats. While that may still be true, it is a lot more exciting and at least possible that fifteen or more GOP incumbents will be ousted.

The election gets much more exciting if one pays attention to specific races. For instance, two time incumbent Mike Ferguson who is a hardcore Bush follower and about as far to the right as Rick Santorum to the West is in a tight race with Linda Stender. The New York times says that the district is leaning Ferguson, but some polls have it as a statistical dead heat.

The district has been cleverly drawn to support the GOP candidates by incorporating much of the western part of New Jersey. So the fact that there is a possibility that Ferguson will lose is a significant statement of the local and national political sentiment.

This of course should be contrasted with what is thought to be a more liberal district to the north, which ironically has an even more conservative GOP incumbent, Scott Garrett. He is being challenged by Paul Aronsohn, who held a position in government with the Clinton administration and Governor McGreevey's administration. It does not appear that it is going to be a close election there regardless of the reasons for Aronsohn's strong political resume.

What is known, is that November 7 is going to be a very interesting night, one that should be watched closely by all.