NUMBER ONE?
I don’t profess to be an expert in any area. I’m unfamiliar with all the facts. I don’t read analyses of how other countries operate their governments. Nonetheless, I am not blind and I am aware of a few things that that make me question the way theU.S.operates in some areas.
At the time the Shoguns of Japan were overthrown,Japansent delegates world-wide to study other countries systems of government, education, welfare, commerce and the like.Japan’s goal was to emulate the best that could be found in each sphere. The country was open to learning from others. It puzzles me why the U.S. doesn’t do likewise.
How can you introduce kids to the beauty of opera when it costs a week’s paycheck to take them to a performance: when a family of five must fork out fifty dollars for admission to a botanical garden – plus ten bucks for parking. Such exposure to music and the arts is nearly gratis in some European countries.
With smiles on their faces, Danes pay far weightier taxes than we. Never does a Dane receive a bill from the doctor.
A Japanese school in the U.S.puts a new student on the same page, in the same textbook, he had in Japan. That is far different from theU.S.where the standards in each state differ. If we ran the military the way we run our educational system soldiers would carry fifty different rifles. What kind of sense does that make? And that is but one of many reasons why kids from other countries outscore our kids in nearly every academic area.
Israel teaches new immigrants Hebrew in a short time enabling them to become self-sufficient. Why can’t the U.S emulate that system for the foreign speaking among us?
We could learn from those role models if we had more courage, a desire to change and improve: if we didn’t pat ourselves on the back and claim to be number one. The pity is our failure to recognize we’re not number one and DO something about it.
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Julie Rose
julierose601@gmail.com
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