November 18, 2004

Some Food For Thought:

For the amount that a war with Iraq will cost (over $100 billion), the U.S. could double
humanitarian aid to poor countries, double K-12 education funding, increase federal
funding for clean energy and energy efficiency, reduce debts of impoverished nations,
renovate public schools over 10 years, offer health insurance to all uninsured American
kids, fully fund Head Start, provide public financing of federal elections –
and we'd likely have billions left over...

Some Questions For Dessert:

1. Can you collaborate the facts above with further evidence, and if indeed verifiable,
further prove them to be understated?

2. Assuming the above statement is factual, what might this say about the economic,
educational, humanitarian, and political priorities of the U.S., both locally and abroad,
given President Bush’s plan to wage war regardless of U.N. approval or support?

3. Given the increasingly disproportionate allocation of federal funding for the
military relative to public education, how might this imbalance affect the potential
intelligence, critical insight, and global awareness of future generations of U.S.
citizens, including the youth of today who could imminently have to pay with their
lives for the unbalanced and unchecked power amassed by a President waging a
war so vastly protested?

4. Considering the major budget deficits facing our school systems, as with most public
K-12 schools and state universities since September 11th, how might one relate our
increasing concern for homeland security to the importance of a greater investment
in the progressive and multicultural education of our youth as well as the ones who
teach them to live and learn to be peace makers in a world evermore plagued by
terrorism and war for the sake of the lives of all humankind currently at stake
and for the renewal of our own historical and ethical integrity as a nation?

5. How might we prevent the immediate risk to life facing all our brothers and sisters
in harm's way. How ugly could it get? How ugly will we let it?

6. Will it be another Vietnam or WWIII?

7. Einstein warned, “We cannot both prepare for war and make peace.”
Which one will it be?

B'Shalom,

Avniel