Arianna Huffington On 'Fran Drescher Show': Education Should Be 'Springboard' For The Middle Class (VIDEO)

Arianna Huffington appeared on "The Fran Drescher Tawk Show" Tuesday, where the pair discussed politics, the news and how America's education system is failing the middle class.

Drescher launched into the discussion, saying "If the government thinks education is expensive, just think what ignorance costs us."

Arianna explained how the shortcomings of the education system are connected to the unemployment crisis.

WATCH:

Comments

[d503kemp]

12:47 PM on 12/15/2010

They're both so pretty.
Oh man . . . did I just really type my thoughts out loud. Rats.

[sc29403]

12:36 PM on 12/15/2010

The Republican platform calls for a smaller federal government, so why in the he// did they get into No Child Left Behind?
Yes, that is a rhetorical question for which the answer is to make a ton of money for cronies in publishing, etc., and to destroy public education (another supposed socialistic entitlement program), at which they have been so successful.
The drop out rate is higher, the kids are less educated, the US has fallen behind more and more countries; perfect plan to shut them down.
If you are of the "new" third world middle class be wary of where your children will get an education. If you don't have the tuition, forget it.
Put education back into the hands of each state, get rid of the Title programs, the red tape of "Highly Qualified Teachers" as opposed to highly qualified teachers (you have to know NCLB to understand that scam that stole good teachers from kids), the reams of regulations, task forces that do nothing, etc., all of which do nothing for kids, but hold schools as hostages. States can work it out, answer to their own, take care of their own.

[jcgrim]

12:18 PM on 12/15/2010

David Sirota in a column on HuffPo calls this the neo-liberal bait-and-switch. The focus on an education crisis is a myth. He suggests until we change our tax and corporate regulation policies, our economy will never generate the need for an advanced work force. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/the-great-education-myth_b_715049.html

According to Sirota
"you've heard this fairy tale from prominent politicians and business leaders who incessantly insist that our economic troubles do not emanate from neoliberals' corporate-coddling trade, tax and deregulatory policies, but instead from an education system that is supposedly no longer graduating enough STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) experts.

To know these suppositions are preposterous is to consider a recent study by Rutgers and Georgetown University that found colleges "in the United States actually graduate many more STEM students than are hired each year.

That debunks the supply-and-demand canard. But can we still blame the jobs crisis on schools failing to deliver more STEM graduates?

Nope.

As researchers discovered, many students are pursuing finance instead of STEM careers because Wall Street jobs "are higher paying" and offer "employment stability" and "less susceptib(ility) to offshoring."

Why would we continue to perpetuate this myth and leave corporations and their minions in congress, supreme court and the executive branch free of real scrutiny?

[JustJoy7]

10:23 AM on 12/15/2010

As I review the educational background of Michelle Rhee, I admire her accomplishments; however, I don't see anything that qualifies her to suddenly have such a front row, center place in determining how to reform education. While a degree in government is good, I would much rather see a person who did their own training in education and leadership in education take on a prominent role in reforming education.

Having completed a 33 year career in education, it always amazes me how people who are now considered experts in education never trained for this expertise. So many intricate dynamics are not even considered by these new found leaders. A good example is understanding what qualified Ms. Rhee to determine that all these teachers she waltzed in and fired were bad teachers. Where is her background in even getting that job? It's puzzling, to say the least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee

[JustJoy7]

10:04 AM on 12/15/2010

Education is a coop with necessary working entities...1) The training institutions; 2) Teachers; 3) Students; 4) Parents; 5) Administrators, both at the school level and at the district level.

Each of these has a vital role to play in order to be successful, and discounting the importance of either is discounting the chance of success. The key is to find a way to enhance the role of each for the common goal of educating the learners. When different segments of the coop are demonized or when the role of either is minimized, it creates a dysfunctional path to the achievement of the common goal.

It appears to be a sport now to place all the blame and responsibility of the teacher, instead of examining all the contributing parts, thereby making the whole idea of reforming education a lot of noise to incite discontentment and finger pointing, instead of trying to fix the whole problem.

[ajwriter]

12:08 AM on 12/15/2010

Somehow the system cut off the last word of my post:

"We the people ARE the government in this country. We fought our wars because we believed in that government , and now we are letting the greedy among us trash it, and with it, our reputation around the world and the investments we must make in our country and citizens to remain in the first world. We must change the poisonous narrative and start investing before it is too late."

"Government" doesn't think education is expensive, government is us, We the People. If we value education, we need to start voting that way. As far as those who will hide behind a claim that "private" is always better, we largely owe our world-class educational university system in this country to public investments in the 20th century. Public investments in education helped make us the superpower we became, in a way private investments hadn't accomplished in hundreds of years.

(When we were fighting the cold war, it wasn't a battle of public versus private, it was communism pitted against representative democracy, our system of government.)

[indy-voter]

08:29 PM on 12/14/2010

The problem is you can graduate from any public high school and still barely be able to read and write.

No one fails anymore, because it places them at a disadvantage.

Yea for more government!

[ajwriter]

12:11 AM on 12/15/2010

Oh, so somehow the people who want government to balance the corrosive forces of concentrations of wealth, so that we make investments in our country and citizens, they're somehow responsible for this problem?

The g-bogyman (i.e., strawman) strikes again, eh?

[forty8r]

08:20 PM on 12/14/2010

Can't have too much education then the current government and political system would fail because the people would figure out they have been coned.

[Harvee Wallbanger]

08:11 PM on 12/14/2010

It's not what you know, but who you know. And it's especially true when employment opportunities dry up like currently.

[heckmepitus]

07:43 PM on 12/14/2010

The problem is the bell curve, on average half of the population is below average intelligence and are not able to succeed in valuable academic studies. Education is no panacea, not matter how much money the government throws at education. In fact less government money for college would improve educational results.

[massjim]

08:24 PM on 12/14/2010

I agree that not everyone can be a "knowledge worker". You need a certain percentage of jobs that don't take a college education.

[zoemonster]

08:31 PM on 12/14/2010

And less govt. money for Wall St would improve our economy?

[JCushing]

07:07 PM on 12/14/2010

If just education is the answer how do we explain the fact that even Ivy Leaguers with solid professional field degrees aren't getting hired or are generally getting low quality offers?

Actually, it has been that way since the tech boom died... somehow hiring at ALL levels from entry to exec for all degree and experience levels is many industries has been at such low rates as never before seen.

It is only in some _leeching_off sectors such as banks, where people are making untold money and that too, only at certain levels.

[reynosaphil]

08:12 PM on 12/14/2010

Amen! The corporate media is being told to say that education is the problem. They are paid not to say that the failed polocies of the last 30 years are the problem.

[KayDGee]

08:40 PM on 12/14/2010

X2 - Bought and paid for by the advertisers! And yet the "liberal media" myth is still perpetuated. I would ask the offshoring CEO's who are also chanting the education mantra... what happened to the jobs that used be held by the Computer Science majors and EE's who bought into "Education is the Answer?"

[progressive state]

06:50 PM on 12/14/2010

Sure, we say we push for education but we make no effort to lower costs of higher education, many of our public schools scrape funds to the very last penny every year, kids who can't even afford lunch have to purchase their textbooks...

Corporations/government knows if we actually made an effort to educate all Americans they would be in big trouble.

[massjim]

08:22 PM on 12/14/2010

Yes, if Colleges and Universities were mostly conservative instead of liberal institutions there would be a huge outcry at the $50K price tag for your kid to be taught by 20-something teaching assistants for the first 2 years!

[plthomas]

06:34 PM on 12/14/2010

We do not need sweeping misinformation from noneducators about education—even when those making the comments have good intentions. US public education is a reflection of how our economic and political systems fail everyone except the wealthy. But middle class children, because of the support of their homes, tend to do well despite the failed policies of our schools (the ones imposed on the schools by bureaucracy). All data related to student achievement is highly correlated to the home conditions of the child—overwhelmingly so with only about 10-20% associated with the quality of teachers/schools. Simply stated, we (educators) do not need more nonexpert experts/celebrities making claims and unsupported commentaries on schools; that is what has us in the situation we are in.

[Moderate Independent]

06:19 PM on 12/14/2010

The great educator Horace Mann said succintly

"Education then, above all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance wheel of the social machinery"

[am10]

09:33 AM on 12/16/2010

And now there's a school named after him that cost $30,000 a year.

[Volkmoidruk]

06:19 PM on 12/14/2010

It's still a springboard, but financial and corporate America have largely drained the pool!