This gubernatorial campaign season, it seems everyone involved in the election in this state is saying “Gambling this,” or “Lottery that.” Occasionally there’s a “Job market the other” thrown in.

But when it comes to the lottery, everyone has an opinion about whether or not it will help education. Allow me to settle the argument.

It won’t. Not because it will fail to bring money in or something but because, even if the lottery worked above and beyond perfection, pumping a lot of money into a system with more holes than a Louis Sachar novel won’t change the fact that our education system, in this state and in this nation, is defunct.

Talking to a friend and former professor, I was given a story of when she taught college somewhere else. There was a football player in her class, a senior. He was a shy, well-spoken, quiet and nice guy. But every time he was asked to read something aloud in class, he found an excuse not to.

So, one day, she called him into her office, handed him a sheet of paper and asked him to read what was on it.

And he couldn’t.

A college senior, illiterate. How does that happen? Teachers just pushing him along, thinking, “He’s a football player, he won’t need to read, he has the sport?”

Unless he’s Brett Favre, he’s going to retire one day, should he play professionally. Then what does he do? Open a restaurant? If you can’t read your own menus or building contracts, that’s probably no good. Be a sportscaster? He can’t read the teleprompter.

Now, maybe that’s a special case of the education system failing massively but I’ve seen some of the basic essays written for some of those general education intro classes most everyone apparently has to take. Capitalization, punctuation and spelling are all out the window. Words that don’t exist get used, and with spell check and grammar check on pretty much every word processor, these basic things shouldn’t happen even if you don’t have the educational skills to catch them whilst you write them.

There are also rumors of teachers allowing students to write essays in “text speak.” No offence, teachers, but if you do that, you should be fired. You’re failing at your job as an educator.

Basic writing and basic mathematics are skills that are, apparently, disappearing en masse these days. My father teaches remedial mathematics courses for people sometimes in their 40s. Those are people who can’t add or subtract, can’t do their taxes or balance their checkbook. Why is this happening?

Our pre-college education is apparently failing us. And our national drive to get anyone and everyone into college, because that’s what really matters, is making us sloppy. If you can’t do basic math or don’t have basic writing skills, you shouldn’t be in college. You should be relearning those basic skills, which you probably will need in the real world.

That’s one of the problems: Students. They sit through middle school, high school and general education courses in college and say, “I will never use this again, why should I care?” And maybe you’re right when it comes to biology or intro to listening or some similar intro course.

But the ability to read, write and do basic mathematics is something everyone will need to use. Sorry, but it’s simply embarrassing when big CEOs can’t even send out memos without basic errors riddled through them.

Students aren’t the only problem. Teachers are also failing the students by failing to do what they should, many times. No student should get to their senior year of college illiterate. A teacher somewhere along the line needed to take the time to fix that problem, or at least notice it. No student should be thinking text speak is an acceptable form of writing, either.

And, colleges? Colleges should maybe start being a little less “arms wide open” and a little more, “Wait… you can’t read, write or do arithmetic? Let’s send you to some remedial courses before we let you into the other stuff.”

Maybe our education of the educators is faulty. I don’t know. But something, somewhere, is clearly screwed up.

If the problem persists, it will be trouble for our nation. Maybe not 50 years down the road. Maybe not even 100. But, eventually, we’re going to have a nation filled with people who can’t write, add, read or hiring the elite few who actually can to do all their work for them.

Now, I realize I’m not offering a solution, merely pointing out the problems. But I recognize I’m not quite educated enough on the subject and the processes for change and reformation to suggest something that is actually feasible. But maybe, just maybe, someone who is running for governor should be?

So, forget the lottery. Want to fix our education? Fix our standards.

Sean Randall is the assistant lifestyles editor of The Crimson White.