Tuesday afternoon I was channel surfing through the minimal cable channels my basic cable provides me and somehow I stopped on C-SPAN 2. There was an installment of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal being televised and California Representative Barbara Lee was addressing different questions for callers. One caller started ripping into her, asking why she didn’t support President Bush’s voucher system.

Lee went on to explain how the voucher system only benefited individual students and not the schools as a whole.

I totally agree with Rep. Lee. The proposed voucher system doesn’t make education better for students and ultimately it will continue to deteriorate the underfunded school systems. What does this voucher system really help? The idea is good because it tries to help students, but it is faulty because it gives no power to the communities. Also it can have children traveling all over the county to receive a proper education that they should be able to receive at their local schools.

I have decided to explore the problems I see with the voucher system and Bush’s proposed “Leave No Child Behind” bill.

Instead of giving students vouchers to attend a school with a better learning environment, why not make the school in their own community better? Why is it that we allow large discrepancies in the quality of education among schools?

There are public schools in some areas that have a computer for every student and are almost as extensive as college campuses. In other areas, there are schools that barely have updated textbooks, let alone computers in the classroom.

Someone can say, “Well the schools get their money from property taxes for the neighborhood.” This is very true, but the idea of not funding schools that are underfunded continues to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer.

How so? Well, if those who are getting the best education are among those groups of people who already have the best opportunity for education, doesn’t that automatically keep success among success?

What about those people who have been given no hope of success because the educational system around them doesn’t promote or fund success.

How are we the most powerful country and so-called “land of the free” when we can’t even guarantee every student a proper education? Instead we throw them a bone and say, “Here is a little voucher for you under-privileged children to keep up with our soon-to-be Ivy League legacy-guaranteed children.”

The greatest problem, however, in terms of education reform is that a lot of politicians and some people don’t care and don’t want underdeveloped schools to become more successful.

It seems like there are many upper-class individuals who would not like to see lower-educated school systems up to par because it may give them and their children more competition in terms of education.

Yeah, some readers could say this is a pessimistic viewpoint or that I am delving too much into conspiracy theories. I would say to those critics that I am not pessimistic, but a realist. I look at man’s ability through historical, sociological and psychological terms to not want the success of those lower than themselves on the totem pole. This is why the whole idea of increased education for those who are under educated is not a top priority, but things like war and being the “pimp daddy” of the world seem consequential. The government would rather be in the business of another country’s workings instead of figuring out the epidemic of many children walking around mentally dead.

There is only so much parents can do to educate their child. But if the parents were educated by the school system that is currently failing to educate their children, how does this country expect them to teach their children anything? It is a never ending cycle that ends up continuing to separate the lines of class.

There have been conversations in the Daily letter section lately saying that we should all be proud to go fight for this country. I have come out directly and said that I would not fight, even if there was a tank rolling down Lincoln Way. But there are things I would fight for.

The late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “If a man has not found something he would die for, he is not fit to live.”

Malcolm X said, “Freedom is not free and fighting for freedom means death.”

I am rebuffing my former statement about fighting for this country. Yes, I would fight for this country, but only if I were fighting for the freedom of everyone to have an equal opportunity at education.

I would fight for a country that treated everyone as though they were a part of this country.

Darryl Frierson is a senior in journalism and mass communication from St. Louis, Mo.