Sunday, October 19, 2003
Welfare and Education
Welfare is a cop out. The vision it was, and the safety net it is, has been exploited, not by those it was intended to serve but by politicians and by those too ignorant to see the albatross it has become.
Welfare is a way for politicians to feel like they are doing something for the plight of poor people without doing anything. The answer lies in the old proverb, “give a man to fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish he’ll eat forever.” So—why aren’t we teaching people how to fish.
My belief is that teaching is the answer. Educating is what the government should be doing, but it is failing miserable. It is failing because it wants to fail. Right now the system of education is just a tool to keep power in the hands of the powerful. Schools are locally funded and curriculum is locally determined in order to ensure local interest, and the locals are interested in themselves. We are a segregated nation, if we are not segregated by color we are segregated by class. What incentive does a rich man have to educate a poor man’s children?
So, they give hand outs, they give hand outs to quell their conscious and they give hand outs to silence the masses. Meanwhile, students sit in over crowded classrooms with outdated textbooks. Even if a child wants to learn and has a will to learn in a crowded classroom, it is near impossible to teach a child of the future when his textbook is from the past.
It is no wonder they need welfare, they are not being prepared for a global economy that spits them up and chews them out. They are not given the resources to fight the machine, because the machine doesn’t want to give it to them. It is only a few that gets through, a precious few.
To those few, goes the greatest responsibility.
Welfare is a cop out. The vision it was, and the safety net it is, has been exploited, not by those it was intended to serve but by politicians and by those too ignorant to see the albatross it has become.
Welfare is a way for politicians to feel like they are doing something for the plight of poor people without doing anything. The answer lies in the old proverb, “give a man to fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish he’ll eat forever.” So—why aren’t we teaching people how to fish.
My belief is that teaching is the answer. Educating is what the government should be doing, but it is failing miserable. It is failing because it wants to fail. Right now the system of education is just a tool to keep power in the hands of the powerful. Schools are locally funded and curriculum is locally determined in order to ensure local interest, and the locals are interested in themselves. We are a segregated nation, if we are not segregated by color we are segregated by class. What incentive does a rich man have to educate a poor man’s children?
So, they give hand outs, they give hand outs to quell their conscious and they give hand outs to silence the masses. Meanwhile, students sit in over crowded classrooms with outdated textbooks. Even if a child wants to learn and has a will to learn in a crowded classroom, it is near impossible to teach a child of the future when his textbook is from the past.
It is no wonder they need welfare, they are not being prepared for a global economy that spits them up and chews them out. They are not given the resources to fight the machine, because the machine doesn’t want to give it to them. It is only a few that gets through, a precious few.
To those few, goes the greatest responsibility.
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