Condi Rice: failing schools are a NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.

[Robb]

I of course thought of DU when I read this. Please, enjoy the madness.

Problem schools put U.S. security at risk, task force says

WASHINGTON — The nation's security and economic prosperity are at risk if America's schools don't improve, warns a task force led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York's school system.

The report, obtained by The Associated Press, cautions that far too many schools fail to adequately prepare students: "The dominant power of the 21st century will depend on human capital. The failure to produce that capital will undermine American security."

The task force said the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies face critical shortfalls in the number of foreign-language speakers, and that fields such as science, defense and aerospace are at particular risk because a shortage of skilled workers is expected to worsen as baby boomers retire.

According to the panel, 75 percent of young adults don't qualify to serve in the military because they are physically unfit or have criminal records or inadequate levels of education. That's in part because 1 in 4 students fails to graduate from high school in four years, and a high school diploma or the equivalent is needed to join the military. But another 30 percent of high school graduates don't do well enough in math, science and English on an aptitude test to serve in the military, the report said.

The task force, consisting of 30 members with backgrounds in areas such as education and foreign affairs, was organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, a New York-based research and policy organization focused on international issues. The report was scheduled to be released today.....

Read More: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_20210713

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Maybe if we funded education as well as we fund the military . . .

[Robb]

2. I promise you

...if the people who don't see Rice as batshit crazy ever get their way, the answer will be to simply lower standards for military service.

Which will require additional resources in the ol' military budget to train those lost souls.

And so on.

[RKP5637]

4. + 1,000,000 +++ n/t

[KansDem]

3. I agree with Condi...

If we as a nation were a tad smarter, she and the Bushistas wouldn't have been able to bamboozle us into a needless war...

Now, Condi, go chase some mushroom clouds...

[Lint Head]

5. I read this earlier and glad you posted! Condi Rice was a national security risk and her ignorance

caused 3,000 people to be incinerated on 9/11. She ignored an email saying Bin Laden to crash planes into buildings in a major city.

According 100 percent of all thinking human adults Condi Rice wasn't qualified to serve in the U.S. government because she is physically and mentally unfit and should have a record as a war criminal and also has inadequate levels of education to know how to read and pass along a damn email that threatened our nation and resulted in thousands of deaths!.

[Initech]

6. And who's responsible for failing our schools I wonder?

[Politicalboi]

7. I guess she didn't see the risk

When the country's dumbest President was a National Security risk.

[Starry Messenger]

8. Joel Klein, to my total lack of surprise.

Another fake progressive school "reformer" sleazing around with his real pals, among them Hoover Institute Condi.

[Hugabear]

9. She's 100% right about the problem, but 100% wrong about the solution

It doesn't take a Mensa member to see that our education has fallen grossly behind many other countries.

However, the answer is not vouchers, private schooling, home schooling, etc.

We need a strong, determined national effort to raise our education standards.

When we see schools that are struggling, we need to fix them - not watch them crumble and encourage kids to go elsewhere.

The first poster had a great point - we should be investing at least as much in education as we do our military.

[Trillo]

14. suspension, and more severely, expulsion (private schools) teach precisely that.

"When we see schools that are struggling, we need to fix them - not watch them crumble and encourage kids to go elsewhere.

[zbdent]

10. we begin bombing in five minutes.

[Solly Mack]

11. Condi wants to torture teachers, no doubt - in "good faith", of course.

Course, she won't call it torture but will call it something like 'enhanced educational restructuring'.

And they won't be spying on teachers but will engage in 'observational rehabilitation'.

and the new program to get the young people in shape (so they can kill!kill!kill!) won't be called a youth camp but will be called the 'Homeland Initiative for Winning Hearts and Minds'

Fuck Condi Rice.

[bmbmd]

12. My dad came back from WWII (in which he took a boat ride

to Africa followed by a walk to Russia) and graduated dental school. Due to some war injuries, he was unable to practice dentistry-couldn't stand up and lean forward because of pain. So, he went back to school with the idea of becoming a college professor. As a decorated war veteran with a science background, he was one of the original recipients of the National Science Foundation grants for excellence in the teaching of science and math. He was paid, fairly well, to pursue his graduate degrees in biology and chemistry at Oklahoma A&M University, now known as Oklahoma State. Truman, and then Eisenhower, recognized the importance of developing a nation of scholars, and made a concerted effort to identify and train the best and the brightest teachers possible. In my opinion, the Space Race and the Cold War were won in large part due to the contribution of prioritized education, and this was a stated aim of the NSF. It took a national commitment to that kind of excellence to get us to the moon and save us from the "Red Menace", for want of a better term. (It didn't hurt that we outlasted the USSR financially, either) I was fortunate enough to have my dad as a professor while in college. His mastery of the subject, his humor, his communication skills, his painstaking preparations, and his insistence on hard work from his students was a joy to behold. I miss my dad's brilliance and expertise across a wide spectrum of disciplines as much as I miss his laugh and his razor sharp sense of humor. I agree with Ms. Rice that an uneducated, illiterate, incurious nation of unthinking, anti-science, anti-art, knee-jerk, home-schooled, homophobic, xenophobic, faith-based automatons is a national security risk, and may in fact have cost us a generation in the technology wars of the future. Someone needs to inspire in us a national will to learn, to excel, and to take joy in knowledge. Someone needs to make smart cool again.

[longship]

13. Very nice reply

Hope you put it in your journal. It deserves preserving.

[Iggo]

15. Hey Condi, shut the fuck up, war criminal.