I realized tonight when I was doing my freelance writing assignment, I’m making it much harder than it needs to be. I really don’t need to stress about anything other than staying on topic, getting the keywords in and hitting the word count. I don’t know why I put it off over and over. Friday I’ll work on the next one I signed up for and I’m just going to relax about this one. I definitely think too much.

In some cases, that’s a good thing though. I read an article today that made me think of something a teacher friend of mine had complained about. She said that she spent so much time teaching to the standardized tests that the government makes the kids take to make sure that the kids learn everything the government thinks they need to learn.

I looked into what the testing is for… reading, math and science. What about art? If I didn’t have art, my writing, my web design.. I wouldn’t feel whole. Reading is great, but if you want to write historical fiction, you need to have a knowledge of history. Without learning about economics, it’s no wonder that more than half of Americans are having problems with their money. They’ve overspent because they haven’t been taught how to budget, either by their parents or the school. Isn’t that what Home-Ec is for? Oh, that’s right, they call it FACS class now (Family and Consumer Science).

What about the sad fact that a lot of Americans (I think the last count was 60%) cannot find Germany (I arbitrarily chose that country) on a map. Let alone cannot list all 50 states. Yet, this plan is supposed to be helping the kids? I don’t see it.

We really need to insist that the government re-evaluate how they are handling this. More money to the schools, positive reinforcement, that’ll go a long way toward helping our kids learn more.

If they want to complain about how the kids who live below the poverty line do not do very well at school, give these kids families money so they don’t have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. Forcing the schools to teach these kids like this is not helping at all.