What Does Jeb Bush Want to be When he Grows up?

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`Commentary Too` - Jul 4, 2006 - `Printable Version`
- What Does Jeb Bush Want to be When he Grows up?
by Robin Buckallew

    More news of the weird, and not too surprisingly, it’s coming out of Florida. Just when you think Dubya Bush has done about the strangest thing you can imagine, he gets upstaged by his younger brother, Jeb. Yes, Jeb Bush, governor of Florida, has done it again. Wiping the egg off his face following the Terri Schiavo debacle, he swings straight back into action, determined not to let big brother be the only one getting attention. Now, Jeb is determined to make the schools better. Well, that isn’t such a bad idea, really. I can think of a few things I would do to make the schools better – like teaching evolution, a really good sex education curriculum, smaller classes, better pay for teachers – but Jeb doesn’t want to waste his time on such trivialities. He goes straight for the big stuff, REAL reform. He wants to make sure the kids don’t waste their time floating through school, and that they declare a major early. This doesn’t seem so silly. Lots of college students spend a lot of time drifting, and could possibly benefit from a little focus that will help them complete their program. The only thing is, Jeb isn’t interested in the college students. He wants kids to declare their major in the 7th grade. That’s right, he’s asking that 14-year-old kids commit themselves to what they want to be when they grow up. That way, they can immediately begin focusing their education that direction, and not waste a lot of time with frivolous, irrelevant curriculum – like math, English, history, and science. We’ll get them into the work force much better trained, and without a lot of silly trivia filling their heads.

    Sound good to you? Well, I want to ask you, what did you want to be when you were 14? Do you still want to be that? Probably not. Me, I wanted to be a rock singer. There’s only one problem – my siblings had to stock up on ear plugs just to get through my rendition of “Happy Birthday to You” on their big day every year. I had no concept whatsoever that I might want to be a scientist. Oh, I liked science all right, and I was good at it, but it never occurred to me that people might actually spend their whole life working as a scientist. My sister had no idea what she wanted to be – she only knew she didn’t want to be me. Hardly a course you can chart out for yourself – unless, of course, I’ve already determined what I want to be, and then you can just be the opposite. So, here I am, someone who wanted to be a rock singer, and I’m now a scientist. I didn’t know I wanted to be a scientist until I was 30. If Jeb Bush had been in charge, I would have reached the age of 30, finally discover I wanted to be a scientist, and I would have never had a science class to give me the decent beginnings of a new career. Fortunately for me, Jeb Bush wasn’t in charge, and I was able to remake myself, having had the advantage of a broad based education with all sorts of classes “I would never use” under my belt.

    So, what’s in store for Florida under this new plan? Well, if it were my father’s generation, we’d be seeing everybody training to be Buck Rogers. If it were my generation, we’d have a whole lot of firemen, but nobody else to take care of the other sectors of the economy (after all, how many 14 year old kids think they’ll grow up to be an accountant or a bank teller?). Kids raised on Indiana Jones might spend all their high school planning to be an archaeologist, only to get to college and find out it’s really all about poking through ancient trash heaps and endless hours spent taking detailed measurements of minute dusty bones. We’ll have lots of ninjas and super models, but not a single librarian or podiatrist. We’ll have more cowboys than we have cows, but no real estate agents. So, what do you suppose Jeb Bush wanted to be when he was 14? You think he sat there at dinner in Odessa, TX, and suddenly announced, in that cute way he had, “I think I’ll be governor of Florida when I grow up

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Commentary Too - Jul 4, 2006 - Printable Version- What Does Jeb Bush Want to be When he Grows up? by Robin Buckallew

`Commentary Too` - Jul 4, 2006 - `Printable Version`
- What Does Jeb Bush Want to be When he Grows up?
by Robin Buckallew