Investment is a Code Word for Insane Spending?

An outline of President Obama's State of the Union Address was presented via an online video today. In that outline today he mentioned investment in Education, Green Technology, and Infrastructure. These are important items. Analysts argue that President Obama's State of the Union Address is going to be a call to arms for investment in these three areas. These are good goals. Investing in these areas will help boloster job growth in this country.

For example, Education will create jobs and train future generations for the work needed to be done in the future. Green Technology will provide jobs that cannot be outsourced to China or India. Jobs for Americans in America providing alternatives to foreign oil and dirty energy. By moving to a Green Technology, we stop damaging the Earth. These innovations in Green Technology cannot happen without a great educational system to teach future generations and challenge them to become better. The last item is Infrastructure. We have not made a revolutionary change on our Infrastructure since the Interstate Highway System during the Eisenhower Administration back in the late 1950s. An update is needed for America to stay competitive in the 21st Century we need to update our roads, bridges, and rail to support the economy of the future.  All three of these items go hand and hand. Without an educated  workforce creating and installing the green technologies, and the infrastructure to move this technology where it is needed America will not prosper.

Even though it seems like Investing in these three items would be a smart long term investment key Republicans are starting their assault on this plan from both houses. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Fox News Sunday,"anytime they want to spend they call it ‘investment,’ so I think you’ll hear the president talk about investing a lot on Tuesday night. We’ve got a huge spending problem here.” This sentament was also spoken by House Majority Whip Eric Cantor on Meet the Press,"when we hear invest from anyone in Washington, to me that means more spending.” These ideas are coming before the State of the Union is even presented. What Republicans are trying to do with these comments is not allow the idea of investment in programs settle into minds of U.S. citizens, but to make it all about government waste. Republicans came back into power in the House under the idea that they would cut the decifict and create jobs.
The problem with that agenda is to coin an old phrase," you have to spend money to make money." Without investing in America, America cannot rebound. The Great Depression was solved not by the budget cuts of 1937, but by the mass industrialization of the country by World War II. We did not beat the Soviets to the Moon by sitting idle and saving money, but by spending on our rocket programs and providing science scholarships to students to help produce a booming technology economy. America does not slove its problems by cutting and reducing, but by investing and reaping the rewards. Another example of investment is the GI Bill given to soldiers after World War II. Seven billion dollars was given to GIs in educational loans and the return was 48 billion dollars. Almost a return of seven dollars for every dollar spent. That is a great return.

We now have an opportunity now to do what we did back then. We have the need and we need to act upon it. For the United States to stay a major player in the world we need to retool for the 21st century we need investment in Education, Green Technology, and Infrastructure.

Sloppy Oversite Hurts the Teaching of U.S. History in Virginia

Talking Points Memo and the Washington Post covered a story today about how the elementary history textbook Our America had many errors in it and according to some of the reviewers should be removed immediately from students. Some of these issues involve African Americans fighting for the South during the civil war, the United States entered World War I in 1916, and the first Europeans to explore the continent wore full suits of armor. All of these items are untrue. One historian, Mary Miley Theobald quoted in the Washington Post,  "Any literate person could have opened that book and immediately found a mistake."

Now a question that needed to be asked is how did these textbooks get into the hands of Virginia school children? In Virginia all text books have to go through a set of standards called Standards of Learning. The Standards of Learning are a set of standards indented to give students a full academic experience. These standards are good I have read all of the Third Grade History and Social Science  Standards and United States History to 1865 and they are legitimate. The United States History to 1865 standards reads like a college syllabus. So we can conclude that the standards did not create the problem.

The main problem that occurred came from the elementary textbooks to fulfill the Third Grade History and Social Science Standards. As the Washington Post article points out that all elementary school books are reviewed by elementary school teachers before entering into the class room. With some of the worst errors such as African Americans fighting for the South should have been spotted by the review committee or someone in the Virginia Department of Education. I just read the Wikiapedia article on African Americans in the Civil War and their article stated African Americans did not fight for the South. Simple fact checking should have found that error. The Virginia Department of Education should have had a historian of some degree, a Graduate TA, RA, a Professor, or a member of the Virginia Historical Society, double check the books. They did not and now some Virginia schools are stuck with an inadequate textbook.

Now though we cannot place all the blame on the Virginia Department of Education or the elementary teachers that reviewed the book. The publisher should also have to take the blame Five Ponds Press out of Weston Conn. They are the ones who published the textbooks in question. There are many flaws in their production of the material. A historian did not write the textbooks a random author with no historical authority wrote them. The book was not vetted by an independent historian validating that the text was factual and properly covered the material. An independent historian should have reviewed the text for quality and accuracy. If that did happen, most of these mistakes would have been caught.
As a historian having the facts is a important part of understanding history. Without those false narratives can be created and dueling views of the world can be promoted.  These ideas can be taken to the extreme and create an alternate view  of reality and create hate or misunderstanding that can be used to move an agenda. When history is used to move an agenda, it is more like propaganda than history. It is important for all parties in the production of any historical textbooks to go through them like a fine comb to find all the inaccurate claims.  If everyone works hard together, we as a society can produce texts that we can be proud of and teach our children an accurate version of history.