Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Maybe we're not doomed

Okay after all this negative bashing of the administration I did hear something this morning on NPR that gives me hope for the future.

It seems that a lot of graduating seniors at some Ivy League schools are volunteering for something called Teach For America, which is a program to bring teachers to low income schools. In fact they had 17,000 top level graduates apply for some 2,000 positions. And the ones they interviewed all wanted to help less fortunate children and "give something back" rather than head straight into the high paying jobs they were educated for and would have gotten as "rich kids".

It more than alleviated my concern at the editorial about how corporate CEOs aren't working toward improving their reputations as money chasing profiteers who care nothing for the laws their breaking. And if these seniors do head into the corporate world after a stint with this group, I suspect they'll take with them the morals and ethics they learned.

In digging through the material on their website I see that the impetus for the program was the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation. Very surprising since everything else I'd seen or read about that was patently absurd and seemed destine to hold back good students rather than help poor (intellectually and fiscally) ones. Ah the program has been around since 1990 so the NCLB only allowed school districts to hire uncertified teachers. It seems a lot like the Peace Corps. This thing is impressive as all hell.

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