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Filmed in Gainesville, Florida
University of Florida Campus
March 4, 2004
Question from the audience: "Do you have a plan to increase the quality and quantity of incoming teachers into public schools, and has legislation like the No Child Left Behind Act been effective in improving schools conditions?"
Dennis Kucinich: "I'll answer the second part of that first. The answer is "no" with respect to No Child Left Behind. Here's the vision I want to bring for education in America. First of all, starting from ages 3, 4 and 5 we I believe would benefit as a nation to have a universal pre-kindergarten program that would provide reading skills, social, educational skills, and nutrition programs. It would be a wonderful way to help those children who would otherwise not have an early start, opening early-start education up to all young Americans. This would be instrumental in closing some of the achievement gaps which was the basis of the creation, at least theoretically, of the No Child Left Behind program.
Here's where I am going - as President I will order a 15% reduction in that bloated Pentagon budget and put the money right into a universal, pre-kindergarten program. That's where that money comes from - sixty billion dollars. We can do that without in any way affecting our ability to defend our country; we're already spending more than the rest of the world combined. Really, think about that. More than the rest of the world combined - for the Pentagon. When we're cutting funds for education, health care, job creation, veterans and housing, we're spending more than the rest of the world combined on defense. We're going to cut that budget by 15%, cut out the waste, the fat, the bloat. We'll get our children a chance for an early start, and fully fund the elementary and secondary education act. We'll have smaller classroom sizes, better pay for teachers, and money for professional development for teachers, for between sixty and seventy billion dollars a year.
We can have a fully-funded program which would enable every young American to be able to go to any public college or university tuition-free. It was said four years ago that you couldn't go anywhere if you didn't have a high school diploma. Today it's said you can't get anywhere if you don't have a college diploma. But so many people are finding that they lack access to the resources to go to college. State budgets are being cut and tuition is going up everywhere in the country. So I'm talking about changing the way we think about these things in the United States. We can change our thinking so it's mandatory that we expect that everyone will be able to have an education from at least age 3 all the way through and including college.
See, my candidacy is really about taking America in a new direction. It's challenging the thinking upon which this country rests and challenging the direction America's going in. And it's showing America new possibilities, a new future, but it involves the choices that we make. We can choose war over peace if we want. We can choose poverty over prosperity if we want. I'm showing people that there's a path towards peace, and a path towards prosperity, for all.
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