Too Big to Fail

Yep, our schools are too big to fail. Or they should be. Heck...I can't figure it out.  Funny thing to me is many argue(including the TU) that schools aren't all really failing.  But Wall Street and many other parts of our financial sector did fail.  And they, unlike schools, ran into trouble due to a "crisis of their own creation".  Near as I could tell the Feds spent  $700 billion in TARP funds and proposed $450 billion in the Jobs Bill.  Compare that to about $120 Billion(no small sum) on Education this year and it makes little sense. We got regulation and little funding and the business sector got the money and not enough regulation.  But with tight budgets money will be harder to come by everywhere.  What bothers me to be honest is the close relationship between corporations and political funding.  People are mad at all kinds of things and I am among them in that sense at least. 

I've heard that expression Too Big to Fail used to describe the rationale for the billions sent bail outs  and frankly I'm not quite smart enough to know whether that statement holds water.  Something is failing because I know smart educated people living near me who cannot find work.  And like most folks I'd claim..it ain't me messing things up.   I'm too busy trying to manage things myself.  So what's the problem?  Uh...?  Sticking to education I think we've done a fairly decent job of expressing this from our perspective. 

I don't necessarily think we need money going out to schools or business to solve problems and might get farther if we put people in charge willing to compromise and listen to each other and promote actual good ideas.  Be they running the federal government, the state govts, a corporation or a school good people care about people before everything else.    Those not focused on self promotion, advancement or spin might do a great deal to remedy any issue we might confront.  But these folks are pretty rare in the thin air of power. 

Throughout I manage to find humor amongst the gloom by not getting to caught up in things.  One guy that helps that we here at TU have shared before is The Daily Show's Jon Stewart.  He finds ways to make me laugh at things that aren't really funny.  A skill most teachers need.  This clip involves the Occupy Wall Street movement and I think their ideological similarity to the Tea Party.  Everyone is so caught up in arguing political ideology that most of them can't see they are frustrated by the same things.  Stewart makes me laugh because he never takes it too seriously.  At least in comedy we are not failing.