No Child Left Inside

You just have to love the Detroit Free Press.

There's at least one proposal in the pending No Child Left Behind bill that Congress should have no quarrel with.

Why is that? Is it a proposal that doesn't cost any money, doesn't add to the bureaucracy, and doesn't heap more responsibilities onto the local school districts while it does provide something of value to our children? Because that is something that I really could support.

An aptly titled plan, No Child Left Inside would finally raise the profile of environmental education in the nation's classrooms. The bill would grant states $100 million for five years to help schools train teachers, design environmentally themed curricula, and increase opportunities for students to "directly experience nature."

Gosh. I guess that would mean no, no, no and no.

Has anyone proposing this crap spent any time in the past few years reading a science or history book? Anyone that does will find out pretty quickly that environmental education is already a very high priority amongst educators and textbook writers. To suggest otherwise is either disingenuous or ignorant.

The $100 million will go to help schools train teachers. Right. By the time the $100 million trickles down to teachers it is going to amount to some audio visual aids and a half-day inservice program--all to provide guidance to teaching professionals that either do or should have this sort of thing figured out by now.

$100,000,000?

I think not.