October 6 Education Week Reflection

A report was released from an executive in the Baltimore school district  "showing that chronically absent students scored 15 to 20 percentage points lower on state assessments than did students who attended school more regularly."  Honestly, all I have to say to most of this article is "DUH!"  So much of primary and secondary school is simply showing up to class and having a pulse!  This isn't that hard people.  I have a hard time believing that people don't get this concept.  It's pretty simple in my opinion.  Show up, do what is expected of you even moderately (excuse the language) half assed and you are going to pass.  I don't think that changes for most any place you are going to attend.  It's not limited to primary and secondary school either.  Plenty of my classes at Willamette Undergrad have felt that way too.  Obviously a little bit of reading is going to be required outside of classtime, but even then some people can't do that.  I'm not sure whether its laziness or what, but I have a hard time believing that people fail out of WU because of ineptitude.  Anyways, I was impressed and slightly mortified at the degree to which one of the employees of the school district went to get students in class.  Having someone drive up to a student's house to get them to go to school is ridiculous.  Where are the parents in those situations?  How is it that responsibility to get kids to go to school is falling on school districts like the one described in Baltimore?  This all feels much to obvious to me...
The other article I reacted to was the one about China giving the United States more money to teach Mandarin in schools across the country.  I honestly couldn't believe how naive the people who opposed to this sounded.  With China becoming a dominant power in the world market (not to mention a military power as well) they will probably become our biggest ally (in which case we certainly would want plenty of people around who know how to speak Mandarin for the sake of business) or our greatest enemy (in which case we will want people who know how to speak it for military purposes).  We are still fighting in the Middle East and the government is recruiting extensively anyone who knows how to speak Arabic.  I'd rather not have people educated in the language and culture when we go to war with these people, so if China wants to help us pay money to teach United States citizens how to speak Mandarin its perfectly fine with me.  It's not that I don't care that they violate civil rights or don't follow our ideas of child labor laws, I not naive enough to think that those are good enough reasons to turn down money from someone that will help us out in the long run.
Quick Hit: It's too bad there aren't more folks like Mark Zuckerberg.  The dude dropped 100 million dollars to help turn the Newark, NJ school districts around.  Thats pretty awe inspiring.