questions.

a random stranger in a coffee shop recently asked my friends and i a question. he interrupted our selfish broodings with 'if you could change two things about our government, other than the current administration, what would it be?' my friend's boyfriend, far more articulate than either of us, quickly became engaged in an in-depth conversation and i returned to to what i was doing. i then began thinking about what i would change. the first thing that comes to mind is our education system. no child left behind {NCLB}has to be, in my opinion, one of the most illogical, unproductive programs in history. i will praise it for its aims at accountability in schools but other than that it is virtually useless. it sets very high standards, while providing no means in which to achieve them. it then relishes schools (primarily wealthy ones) who achieve the test scores by providing more funding (as well as bonuses for superintendents) and punishes schools who fail to make the grade. the list of ramifications for failing schools is ridiculous, even stipulating the use of already limited funding o pay for students' transportation to another school if their parents are dissatisfied with the failing school. so the school's funding is cut, existing funding must be used in ineffective ways, and the expectations in test scores are raised, making it near impossible for the school to ever catch up. {and as a side note: NCLB also requires the release of all students' personal information to military recruiters} in retrospect, NCLB plays perfectly into the capitalistic values of american society. the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
this brings me to my second issue of change: social disparity. i would like to see the gap close, or at least narrow, between the rich and the poor. this could be done through a progressive income tax, but i think ultimately, it comes down to many peoples' perceptions and prejudices. going back to my first point, many poor schools are in poor neighborhoods. this gets into all sorts of issues of school funding coming out of property taxes so the more valuable the property, the more funding available for the school and so on ans so forth. let's suppose that a student at a poor school has less of a chance of either pursuing higher education or trade school or starting a well paying job after high school graduation. so the student gets a marginal job and can't afford much in the way of housing, so he or she remains living in the poorer neighborhood, their kids attend the same schools with the same disadvantages and the vicious cycle continues. i'm not saying that disaffected youth have no chance of rising up out of their circumstances to do great things as there have been many examples throughout history and through my own experiences working with inner city youth, a great many of them have the potential to do great things, they just have many more barriers to cross with less resources than those with a higher social standing. so why couldn't someone move out of the area to somewhere with better schools and better opportunities. here is where personal prejudices of those in the real estate, mortgage loans, and job markets comes in. there are also many factors such as a greater value placed on family within minority communities which can be a influence on generational poverty. anyways, why discrimination in the real estate market? possibly many wealthy or upper middle class families don't want poorer families living in their neighborhoods, with their poor kids going to good schools which may infringe upon the education and opportunities of the wealthier children. this is not true everywhere or for everyone but it does exist, very often unacknowledged, and it remains a destructive force in this country. i continue to think that if we want to solve problems on a large scale, we must first begin with ourselves. and that's what i would change about our government.