President Elect- Donald Trump On Educational Policies

Conrad Belluomo

president-elect-donald-trump-on-educational-policiesEver since Donald Trump won the presidential election, there is deep worry, interest and curiosity about his policies and how they will impact the nation. More specific information is being rolled out each day that grabs headlines and eyeballs not just in the United States but the world over. Even before he has officially assumed office, Donald Trump, as president elect has begun affecting key policies, one such that gained attention was their education policy.

Donald Trump’s team is of the belief that their public education system has collapsed because the system offers them no competition. To change this, their policies will center around 3 points – end Common Core, providing parents with choice of school and removal of the federal government hand from the student loaning system.

The way they see it, this empowers parents to choose a school right for their children from the existing president-elect-donald-trump-on-educational-policies2private, charter or public schools and create healthy competition for public schools to excel. They have no other choice but to shape up ship out.

The new policy plans to re-appropriate $20 billion amassed as education funds into vouchers of around $12,000 for parents to avail at a public, private or charter school. The policy also expects the state to chip in with funds nearly five times more than what the federal government doled out towards education.

This system has been affected in Indiana by the Vice-President elect, Mike Pence. Consequently some positive changes were noticed. The overall grade of the state had increased in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But there is no study correlating the two and may well be an independent accomplishment by schools. No findings revealed that the voucher policy impacted the health of the school system.

There are some initial studies confirming however those students who switched from public to private schools had scored poorly in math.

People have no clues what to conclude. Discussions are still very much underway about its pros and cons. There are no predictions from experts whether the stand taken by the policy makers will pay off.

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Lack Of Sex Education In China -A Growing Concern

Conrad Belluomo


lack-of-sex-education-in-china-a-growing-concern1China has made leaps of progress in all matters except one – in imparting sex education to its society. The knowledge is almost missing from their school curriculum, except perhaps a terse instruction by school teachers to their female students to swallow a pill if they ever got raped. That is what constitutes formal sex education in China.

Statistics procured paints a dreary picture. Even as China marks the World Aid’s Day, you cannot ignore the staggeringly high HIV infections and abortion rates.

In terms of percentages – in 2015 alone there were nearly 115,000 new HIV infections reported according to the country’s STD/ AIDS Prevention and Control Board. Nearly 14% of them fell in the age category of 15 to 24. And in 2016 this number is even higher.

Chinese universities have begun to install vending machines to supply home testing kits to detect HIV.  But there are no preventive measures being taken. The foremost requirement is sex education. Even though there has been some progress, lack-of-sex-education-in-china-a-growing-concern2it isn’t enough considering the alarming growth of HIV infected citizens.

Sex education faces a huge uphill task. Their society is closed to the subject. Youth is given very basic knowledge such as information about condoms etc. There are some voluntary organizations springing up such as Bloom and Blossom that are providing sex education and spread awareness over the internet.

There are many women who get abortion done, as they are left with no other choice. Most of them are unprepared for such procedures. Each year, China performs nearly 13 million abortions and these too are only the reported cases. The unreported number is even higher.  The reason to undergo abortion is because women are completely unaware of the concept of safe sex and contraceptives.  Even advertisements underplay the seriousness involved in such a procedure.

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