Voting for Ignorance

Millions of voters will turn out for tomorrow's polls still uneducated and uninformed about the candidates. This may cause some uneasiness, especially when voting for president, but it makes the vote that much more important for those of us who are qualified to make an educated vote. Education is a very important issue to address in this campaign from both candidates, since with  education comes awareness, relevance to campaign issues, class structure, and opportunity. It is the most important issue because it allows us to understand and reason with campaign policy, as well as how to help others become informed citizens.

Both candidates have educational reform policies on their websites, but one stands to be better than the other. Since 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act has been implemented throughout America's public schools, setting basic guidelines as to the intellectual activity and test results of middle America. The act places primary focus on standardized tests for students, grossly impairing the students ability to find other points of interest or pursue an individualized curriculum. Naturally, those with the money to send their kids to private schools have enough wealth to so because they are educated as well. This is most concerning in primary and secondary education, places where most Americans form their foundational belief system based on personal experience within a homogenized public school. Obama would like to change this act, lifting the burden of students to regurgitate the same curriculum every year, challenging teachers to entice students with exciting information that would lead to higher education. The more educated we are as a nation, the better we become. In this way, Obama realizes importance of the lower and middle classes to be properly educated, stemming from drooping educational ratings among other countries, so he proposes college vouchers and new programming starting in kindergarten. American knowledge strength comes from a strong public system. His proposal may be more reform than would happen, but at least his desire and outward articulation of educational importance is at the forefront of his campaign.

McCain's proposal seems to have missed the mark. His website states little in the sense of reform, alluding to vouchers being the best option. This proposal doesn't begin to fix inner city public high schools, those which suffer the most, and doesn't make better secondary education free, just "more affordable", presuming you have excess money, maybe a few thousand per year, to send your kids to private schools. Most Americans can't, and this underdeveloped proposal will not make America more knowledgeable, nor more inclined to pursue academic interests in higher education. And though the media does play a large role, acceptable youth education should rule out any possibility of FOX news becoming a credible news source in anyone's eye.