A despicable John McCain add, and Obama's education policies

I hope people that watch this realize that its just ridiculous that anyone would actually support sex education to kindergartners.

It was actually a bill, not created by Obama, that teach kids how to protect themselves from sexual predators.

McCain is attacking Obama's education record because McCain has no new ideas about education. Basically, his only "idea" is to repeat the Republican talking about about school vouchers that first gained fruition during the 1980's under Ronald Reagan.

Obama's much more expansive and modern education plan actually comes from Obama's own association with policy experts, some of which were his neighbors in Chicago.

This column from the conservative columnist David Brooks states:

"it’s worth noting that both sides of this debate exist within the Democratic Party. The G.O.P. is largely irrelevant. If you look at Barack Obama’s education proposals — especially his emphasis on early childhood — you see that they flow naturally and persuasively from this research. (It probably helps that Obama and Heckman are nearly neighbors in Chicago). McCain’s policies seem largely oblivious to these findings. There’s some vague talk about school choice, but Republicans are inept when talking about human capital policies."

The debate referenced is how to close the gap between the rich and the poor, the answer is education:

" As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, 'The Race Between Education and Technology,' America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades (between 1870 and 195), and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school."

And how can we really progress education:

"Heckman points out that big gaps in educational attainment are present at age 5. Some children are bathed in an atmosphere that promotes human capital development and, increasingly, more are not. By 5, it is possible to predict, with depressing accuracy, who will complete high school and college and who won’t."

and

"It’s not globalization or immigration or computers per se that widen inequality. It’s the skills gap. Boosting educational attainment at the bottom is more promising than trying to reorganize the global economy."

This really hits home with me because my experience as a volunteer for Big Brothers/Big Sisters recounted here. Where my little was just so far behind academically from his peers that high school graduation was an enormous barrier. And his own personal ego maybe, or fear to admit or face how far behind he was really inhibited him from catching up.

I am not an education expert. But when one candidate, McCain is throwing out weak and desperate slander, instead of having the debate on ideas, and another is actually proposing ideas that have backing in current research...

These issues are important enough to have the debate. Unfortunately, the Republican party is the party without ideas.