Jack Kingston: “One of the great parts about this job is that we do get lots of students come and visiting our offices and I am always…”

“One of the great parts about this job is that we do get lots of students come and visiting our offices and I am always inspired. It is interesting that there are a lot of folks who are down on students, but I look at the kids who are in our classes today and I feel very, very optimistic. But often, it is because of their own effort or their parents more than it is because of the education system. We were talking about preparing kids for the future. One of the realities that children of today will face a lot more than our generation is that they will be competing directly against German, Japanese, British, Canadian children and so forth. The question is, are we preparing them best? Of the 760 different Federal education programs, it is interesting to note that there are 14 programs that deal with reading, but 39 deal with art. There are 11 that deal with mathematics, but 27 that deal with environment. Now, I think it is important to know about art and it is important to know about environment, but when you are talking about competing in a global economy, you better know your math and you better know how to read. But because the Federal Government passes things based on politics and emotion far more than logic, it is a lot more popular to vote for art and environmental programs rather than math and reading because they are somewhat lackluster. But are we cheating our children when we do that? I think we are. We have to prepare them for the global marketplace.”