“Saying one thing and doing another is no novelty, but it certainly seems the case in education.”

Regarding school funding, Unhappy Birthday, Leandro by Nan Lund and Pam Bloom, raises some serious questions about the schools, the support they receive or do not receive, the state legislature and the general public.

That it is possible to deliberately underfund education without this causing a scandal says something about the underlying problem – the attitudes and involvement of the public.

Saying one thing and doing another is no novelty, but it certainly seems the case in education. People are “concerned” about their children and probably cheer them on at sports events.

Yet what sort of politicians do they vote into office, and do they accept responsibility for what said politicians do? Do they have libraries at home to offset the influence of the TV and other devices that only deal in entertainment and trivia?

Can students write now or are they only capable of printing and texting? Do they learn things of substance, or if not, feel satisfied by finding information via Google? To what extent does entertainment negate education? It certainly receives much attention in the US, not the least of which is the exaggerated fascination with the Oscars. The items that “trending” on Yahoo’s page upon signing in are, in my view, utterly lacking in meaning, but then perhaps meaning has itself become trivialized along with much else in culture.

There is much to be done to make education meaningful and worthwhile rather than a pretense of intellectual development, and starving it of necessary funding when politicians show such fondness for large banquets of pork, calls for change, for voting for better people to address such problems for the people of North carolina, but also for a more serious attitude toward learning period.

Richard Nash Creel