There has been a lot of talk about the potential demise of Big Bird if a certain candidate wins office. This morning I read an article about the funding of public television written by LeVar Burton. He talks about the importance of PBS and how it is helping to provide education through their various children’s shows. If PBS was unfunded, he says, much of the local level funding would be cut and there is a potential for rural area PBS affiliate stations to be affected most.
The most interesting part of reading articles on the web are the remarks afterward. One such commenter talked about the fact that education is not mandated by the constitution and should be administered on the local level. He cites the creation of the Department of Education as the reason teachers are teaching to the test and the nation wasting money.
Whether it is constitutional or not, I think as a nation, we have a responsibility to our future. I believe we need to set a national standard which then can be managed locally. Administering the standards is better on the local level, but nationally we need to identify the educational expectations of our children and the standards that our schools need to achieve. Education needs to be kept as a national priority. Big Bird should remain alive and participating in that expectation.
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