Leave Kids Behind

So, I am very much opposed to the whole No Child Left Behind thing. I understand extending the privileges of education to those who may otherwise not be able to have access to it, but the reality is that it's dumbing everyone down. In accordance with NCLB, schools' curriculum appeals to the lowest common denominator. Kids who don't work and get sorry grades get promoted to the next grade with everyone who works for their grade, because 1) teachers don't want to deal with them, and 2) the teacher may get fired if they are failing "too many" students.

My sister was a TA for basic English when she was in high school, and would often report that there were students who had anywhere from 2%-13% in the class. My question is: if you're not going to work, why are you in class? Why are you in school at all?

The bigger question here is why do we not have options for people who don't want to go through high school and higher education? Education isn't for everyone, and we need blue-collar people just as much as white-collar people, if not more so. Why do we not have pathways for people to decide what they want to do later in life, and develop the educational skills they need to perform their job? Our nation is getting dumber and dumber because we keep pandering to the class moron who either 1) doesn't want to be there and earn good grades, or 2) is too stupid to understand it. Get these people out of our system and into something that's suited for what they want to do. Don't force them to go along an educational path they don't want to be on, all while making everyone else perform at the most minimum level humanly possible. I have to wonder if the bulk of misdiagnosed ADD/ADHD cases are smart kids who are bored out of their minds.

Thanks alot, George Dubya. Thanks for making Americans stupid. (because he's the one who actually proposed and wrote in NCLB)