Education is important, but as the saying goes: “You can drag a horse to water, but you cain’t make him drink”. The same applies to learning. If students are not there to learn, we can throw unimaginable sums of money at education and it will result in the same outcome as today’s outcome… NOTHING! From what I see, the problem is not money, not teachers, not enough public concern, but rather a lack of interest in learning by students. Drop-out rates are staggering! Teachers fear for their lives in some schools. And politicians sit around and talk about spending more money on teacher pay. WHY? Why pay teachers more, they can’t teach a student that is not receptive to learning. Until students come to school to learn, we are just wasting money, and playing petty politics. America better wake up… education is the only solution to our economic woes. History tells us that well educated societies have higher standards of living. But I fear our coming generation of American’s lack the basic R’s, and will never be able to compete with other countries like China or India. In those countries not only is education looked upon as a solution to grinding poverty, their wage scales are far far lower than America’s. The combination of highly educated citizenry and low wage scales is a “deadly” combination for our next generation of mental dwarfs… who are more knowledgeable of “Little Caesar” the pizza guy than the real Caesar from ancient Rome.