May 8, 2008
Bowling and Whiskey Get More of the Campaign Spotlight Than Education Policy
None of the three remaining major presidential candidates has spent any “real time” discussing education policy on the campaign trail, even though the future of the nation may well rest on how well it educates current and future generations, argues OpenEducation.net, a Web site dedicated to tracking changes in the field of education.
In a recent post the site’s editors argued that the presidential candidates lack a vision on education. Even though the Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, have offered detailed platforms on education topics, they wrote, the candidates have failed to shine much of a spotlight on the issue as they have campaigned.
On the Republican side, the situation is bleaker for education. The blog item says that “it has become increasingly clear that John McCain may forgo any real discussion about the topic completely.”
The item also links to several other articles that have raised similar concerns about the lack of extensive discussion so far about education policy in the 2008 campaign.
They include an article in The American Prospect that said that Mr. McCain’s last major statement on any plans he has to fix the nation’s problems in education came in 2000. The OpenEducation blog item also links to an opinion piece in The New York Times by Bob Herbert, who lamented that education appeared to be “much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball.”
Sara Hebel | Posted on Thursday May 8, 2008 | PermalinkComments
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Americal public cares a lot less about education than religion, the candidates are simply reflecting this sad picture.
— Mark de Goz May 8, 04:05 PM #
Does it matter whether the candidates give lip service to education or not? Neither brings any plans for education, and neither have ever had plans for education.
Besides an educated electorate is not what Washington really wants. Needy, helpless, bowling, and drunk will keep the congress, senate, and the oval office in the happy status quo.
Mr. Obama wants real change. When he defines change, I’ll listen.
Ms. Clinton want to end the Bush presidency so we can, pardon, go back to a clinton presidency?
Then there’s McCain!
— seth May 8, 05:07 PM #
Anyone who saw Bill Moyer’s “The Selling of the War” knows that with the sole exception of the Knight-Ridder syndicate, the American press has lost all semblance of journalistic mission or standards. New York Times? Los Angeles Times? Wall Street Journal? None of them are worth the paper they are printed on. And the television networks are at an even lower plateau. Hiding behind the Potemkin Village of their mastheads is a vast wasteland of fawning, public relations, access whoring, and insipid pandering.
— thee michelle gun marci May 8, 05:41 PM #
What speeches has Sara been watching? Most speeches by Senator Obama and even in the little time he was given in the latest debate with Senator Clinton he has repeatedly stressed education, in particular early childhood education. Senator Obama, even in the face of the kitchen sink attacks and inane questions from debate interviewers has never failed to highlight educational issues.
— BE! May 8, 09:04 PM #
Obama is the candidate. He’s doing it against all odds!
— John May 9, 06:14 AM #