Hagelin-Goldhaber 2000

Education
The most important issue in this campaign is education.

The most important issue in this campaign is education. Our current educational system is failing us--badly. Educational outcomes have fallen to all-time lows in comparison to other nations. We are importing much of our skilled labor: many of our highest-paying, high-tech jobs are going to immigrant workers with better technical education.

To compete in today's highly competitive, fast-paced information economy, we need to develop our full mental potential. We must better harness our most precious national resource: our human resource--the unlimited creative potential of our 270 million citizens.

America's problems are human problems: crime, drug dependency, domestic violence--even pollution results from extreme narrowness of vision, and the failure of education to expand comprehension and graduate responsible citizens.

The potential of our brain is vast. Human consciousness, fully expanded, sees the totality--what a physicist calls the unified field. When comprehension is broad, all behavior is life-supporting. One knows how to fulfill one's own aspirations while promoting the interests of society as a whole. As a result, society becomes spontaneously "self-governing." The Founders of America knew that education was key to achieving a self-governing nation, a nation in which the federal government could be small and efficient, and in which citizens naturally upheld each other's rights to life, liberty and happiness.

I am the only educator running for President in this 2000 election. I have spent the last 20 years searching the nation for the most successful curriculum innovations. George W. Bush and Al Gore don't have a clue about how to reverse the decline in educational outcomes.

I support proven educational innovations, which are working spectacularly in our most successful public and private schools. These success stories must be showcased and made available to schools all over the country. They include basic reforms like improving the nutritional quality of school lunches in neighborhoods where malnutrition plays a serious debilitating role in attention span and academic performance. They include presenting knowledge in a more comprehensive and comprehensible fashion, where the specifics of knowledge are placed in clear context of the entire discipline, so that students are never lost in the minutia. They include proven mental exercises (such as Transcendental Meditation) to enhance IQ, expand comprehension, dissolve stress, and restore EEG coherence (orderly thinking).

I support lengthening the school year, and providing more class time for core subjects in which our students are lagging those in other nations.

I would elevate the teaching of our youth to a prestigious and honorable profession, with commensurate compensation. I would raise teachers' salaries by at least $10,000 per year through a program of matching block grants to the states, which could be accomplished for the price of five B2 bombers--a "pork-barrel" weapon that the Pentagon does not even want. This would generate more competition for teaching jobs, allowing us to expect and demand higher standards. And I would reward teachers for performance, not seniority.

I support systemic changes to increase competition in our stagnant school systems. I support charter schools, and experiment with vouchers that would help provide an escape hatch for children trapped in schools that are chronic under-performers.

I support adult literacy programs, job education and vocational training, and I would end the digital divide that has prevented many of our citizens from sharing in the unprecedented prosperity offered by today's technology revolution.

These and other proven, field-tested educational innovations will help to ensure America's competitiveness and leadership in the family of nations. And they will provide the full development of mind, body and behavior, plus the practical skills needed to achieve our highest aspirations, to enjoy life fully, and to contribute maximum to the progress and prosperity of our great nation.