I'm a firm believer that we need to cut 10 percent of the fiscal military (54 percent) budget in the next five years to reallocate to other needs such as education (six percent) veteran benefits (three percent), science (four percent), etc. That belief stands. Though I will acknowledge this: if we just put more money toward education (to 10 percent if the budget went how I want it to go), that wouldn't magically fix education. It wouldn't fix the terrible teachers, though it could inspire more people who are passionate in it to teach, it wouldn't automatically make schools better with new programs to incorporate into the current programs and it wouldn't fix the biggest issue with education today.

America faces an issue in the education system where teachers train students to be able to memorize facts. Teachers teach fact memorizers. Not how to use these facts in their everyday lives and become a better, more conducive member of society, but just to memorize. In an odd sense, it's oppression. The school system oppressed the students by dumbing everything down so they just learn facts. It's dehumanized them. Life shouldn't be about how many facts you know. Knowing those facts means nothing if you can't apply them to real life situations. If I was an employer, I'd much rather hire the person with the 2.5 "GPA" who's had hands on experience and can convey to me what they know, why it's important to know and how to apply this knowledge they have in a real life situation. Over the alternative: a 4.0 "GPA" person who can spout facts but can't tell me either why they matter or how to apply them.

The education system isn't just underfunded, it's broken. Future children of the United States deserve an education that's challenging, engaging and allows a person to actually learn, not just spout a fact or two about how in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue or what the Fibonacci Sequence is. I'd much rather they learn: what Columbus did once he came to "America" and how that affects us today and the Native Americans. They should know how the Fibonacci Sequence can be found in nature, art and all the sorts of amazing tricks within the sequence.

We don't "owe" those future generations a thing, but we should want them to be better off than we were and to leave it better than we left it. A system that isn't complacent on a test at the end of the year would be a dream! Right now the system is memorize facts to spill on a test that tells us nothing other than how well we can indoctrinate students. This system leads to a whole school year, wasted, preparing for an examination that can determine whether a teacher is kept or fired and is used as a measure of how much a student has memorized, not learned. Along with the fact that some questions are ridiculous in how they want them to be answered. There needs to be an overhaul in the education system that leads to a revolution in the system to lead to positive change. The current way isn't the best we can offer, it's not the most conducive to the future, I'll end with this: we can aid America by working on the future, today, not the future when the future comes.