The CotoBuzz Journal, Community Journalism

August 2008 ISSUE

We do not make jokes, we simply watch the LA Times, the Orange County Register and CID/HOA board of directors and report the facts!

French Fries or Sushi Rolls, Mr. President Obama?

July 13, 2008

When you have been unable to sleep wondering where you are going to send your kid to college, whom are you going to call at 3:00 o'clock in the morning?

Recently Senator Obama confessed to being embarrassed after coming home from Europe to find that Americans only know how to say mercy beucoup and have not even included the term merd, in any of the rap lyrics (we added italicized portion) . Not too long ago, US popular culture was imbued with the French language. Take for instance the Beatles singing "Michelle, ma belle, sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble", or more recently Lady Marmalade's "voulez vous cous chez avec moi"

On the other hand, in the middle of a budget crisis in California "The state is about to pump half a billion dollars into teaching children to roll sushi, juggle pins and master new dance forms, even as spending cuts threaten to erode instruction in reading, math and other fundamentals", wrote recently The LA Times' Evan Halper. This does not include the "untouchable funds" in the special education budget, now a cottage industry in California. Funds to assist gifted children are no where to be found.

Or what about the criminalization of home school teaching? Recently, the Second District Court of Appeals in California effectively banned home schooling in the state and threatened parents who choose to teach their own children with criminal prosecution. "Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice" H. Walter Croskey said in the ruling.

What about the state funding same sex bathrooms and paying for transgender teachers to take care of their transformation costs? Or even funding diversity seminars to teach students to be not only tolerant, but also accepting of transgender students?

What is more embarrassing to us is that various reports indicate that India and China are graduating more scientists and engineers than the US - The Economist reports that India graduated 690,000 scientists and engineers of all types while China produced 520,000 and the United States 420,000, for example, and in India, says a Newsweek article, you can get "quality work at 50% to 60% of the cost, and that it is well known fact that the number of young women gravitating to information technology has been declining for some time, and that industries such as the auto industry have been forced to outsource a good portion of the work to remain viable, and newspapers such as the Orange County Register are being forced to do the same.

The point is that politicians such as Senator Obama, instead of pontificating about how we cannot speak French, instead should be looking into fixing the broken US education system by busting the powerful teachers union, for example or outsourcing public education, to parents (as opposed to calling them criminals), or even outsourcing education to India or China. The technology is available to have a virtual classroom where PhDs can teach US children not only math and science, but also languages, at a fraction of the cost.

So, whom are you going to call at 3:00 am? You call Senator Hilary Clinton. After all Chelsea ended up at Stanford University as opposed to any of the branded East Coast schools.

Pass the Olive Tapénade, the Chimay Vieux cheese and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon, hold the French fries!

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