In the nation’s quest to leave no child behind, the politicians are admitting that indeed there are children left behind. In the spirit of the land of opportunity, the nation is ostensibly bent on bringing up to par the nation’s children by impossible tests that have nothing to do with the reality — a term more than ever blurred by “reality” TV — which everyone knows has to do with the child’s home environment, the child’s DNA, the schooling of the parents, the disrepair of the school attended, the degree of the teacher’s frustration or competence.
Politicians have expertise in only one field: treat the symptoms — never mind about the complex causal relationships. As long as poverty — and it seems to be an eternal factor — the children will be left behind, regardless of even serious improvements by the education field. How can one calculate sickness, rotting teeth, the emptiness of a fatherless home, a working mother, and a brother in a street gang with its intimidation, when testing such a child?
How can one compare this child of the inner-city with a suburbanite child with the early experience of nursery and pre-kindergarten, a private room with books, taken to cultural activities, one parent always home during the day, a college student baby-sitter helping with homework and research on the Internet, summer camp, periodic medical and dental visits, never being on a bus, but for the yellow one, or a subway, minimal worry playing in a safe neighborhood, having supportive older siblings and grandparents, back to school shopping with a generous, loving mother wanting only the best for her child?
The obvious root cause is the inequity of lopsided distribution of wealth and the recalcitrance in living up to the ideal of the land of opportunity. This is not to imply there are not opportunities for the average hardworking citizen; but each generation shortchanges the next by virtue of building wealth for the progeny of those who already have and by so doing more of the “aristocracy” is developed and limits opportunity for those who have not yet made it, let alone pass it onto their children.
Far worse now is the outsourcing of corporate wealth to initiate a new kind of slavery abroad upon which the aristocracy here is profiteering and thus further entrenched while the less fortunate here find opportunity at abysmal levels, except for the more gifted, flirting with entry into the new aristocracy and ever widening the gap among the poorly educated and less skillful.
Under this scenario NCLB does not mean not to leave behind those with hopelessly low IQs or those enmeshed in anxieties owing to a nasty environment — besides these people are needed in the future for the growth of low-paying jobs as the bolder world slavery marches on.