My nation’s principal leader, President George W. Bush, has cut to $0, once again, federal funding for Enhancing Education Through Technology (E2T2) program. Bush’s FY07 Budget Proposal, for the 2nd year, has zeroed out E2T2 funding. Last year, through heroic lobbying by CoSN and many others, the $500 million dollar program was cut to only $272 million.
To me, it’s simple. How do we prepare our children for their future, when we aren’t even afforded today’s information technologies? I must be missing something, because George Bush is surely a smarter man than me.
As a 21st Century Learning Fellow in Alabama, I think it is a tragedy that our government cannot see what is right in front of them. If we are going to shoot for leaving No Child behind, then we have to raise the bar and aim toward educating our students for the future. I teach high school English. I know that my students already use so much technology in their daily lives. My goal is to show them the educational uses of those forms of technology. Shouldn’t that be the goal of our government? Shouldn’t we strive to teach the Net Generation with the future rather than with the past?
Was the E2T2 program working? Was it effective? Was the money being spent making a difference in classrooms?