July 31, 2007
Arthur Levine: Selfish Baby Boomers Are Turning Backs on Schools
Former Teachers College honcho Arthur Levine has done the math:
Of the first 12 hours of debates among the presidential candidates this year, they have given education less than 33 minutes of lip service.
And if you take out the 19 minutes that came from one Democratic debate alone at Howard University on June 28 (prompted by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier in the day against voluntary integration efforts), and you get an idea of how little education seems to be penetrating the campaigns this season.
Levine suggests that this is only going to get worse in the coming years as Baby Boomers move on to more pressing Boomer issues:
In the next decade, our nation is likely to pay less and less attention to education. Baby boomers, who constitute more than half the electorate, single-handedly made education a priority because they wanted good schools for their children. Today most of their kids have graduated or are largely through school. The boomers are now focused on their parents, who are growing older and more frail, absorbing an increasing share of boomers’ time and resources. They are asking for relief in the form of elder care, health insurance, and Social Security. These issues will gain more and more priority as the boomers themselves begin reaching retirement age in 2008.
Which once again reminds me that I need to write that book I have been pitching for years: Someday the Baby Boomers Will Be Dead (And the Rest of Us Can Get Our Planet Back.)
In all seriousness, this is precisely the reason we have to get this right TODAY.
