Education in the Election

The topic of education is in the election news today.  This makes me happy and I can’t wait to see more of it.  In the article I read Obama really only says that college is not affordable for many students and that McCain has passed up opportunities to make it more so in favor of tax cuts for corporations.  Interesting, and you can read the entire article here, but I’m more interested in the education of children.  Is a college education a good thing? Yes.  Do I wish more people who want to go to college could go? Yes.  Do I think it is the most important topic in education for this election? Not by a long shot.

Ohhh candidates???  Are you listening?  Answer these questions and quit focusing on saving people money.

• How are you going to give the arts a more prominent position?
• How are you going to make our educational system more globally competitive?
• How are you going to fix (or please, please get rid of) No Child Left Behind?
• Can you make national standards and guides so all schools are teaching the same thing (with the exception of state history)
• Can you start funding public schools and let private schools take care of themselves?
• What about a required foreign language from elementary school?  Citizens of most countries speak a minimum of two languages.  Wouldn’t it be nice if we could catch up?

So those are a few of the random things I’d like to see make it to the campaign chats the candidates will have along the way.  What questions would you like answered or what topics would you like addressed?