In current political affairs, there is a strong competition between the democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders and republican candidate, Donald Trump. Both of these candidates have somewhat different backgrounds and views and ideas, such as their past experiences (which definitely affects how they choose to react to some issues), their views about the current education system and how they might improvise on it.
Sanders and Trump have very contrasting background experiences. Sanders has done hard work from the bottom up. He started off as a carpenter and documentary filmmaker. In 1981, he was elected as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. But getting elected was not easy, he repeatedly ran and lost low level contests before he actually won. He soon became part of the House of Representatives and then finally of the U.S Senate.(“Meet Bernie”). We can conclude that Sanders has had political experience before. Trump meanwhile, inherited a lot of money from his father and used it to become a “real estate mogul” as The Week’s journalist Damon Linker puts it in his article. Trump wrote books about business and economics. He has been the subject of comedians, flash cartoon artists and online caricature artists. He has made appearances in various television series, films, and shows (“Donald Trump” Wikipedia). He has little or no past political experience.
Both the candidates want to approach terrorism issues in extremely different ways. “We live in a difficult and dangerous world, and there are no easy or magical solutions. While we must be relentless in combating terrorists who would do us harm, we cannot and should be policemen of the world, nor bear the burden of fighting terrorism alone”, says Senator Sanders (“War and Peace” berniesanders.com). I think that this means that of course we must aggressively pursue international terrorists who do us harm, but must not engage in torture. We don’t need to be recognized as a country with uncivilized behavior. On the contrary, Donald Trump says, “These people are insane,” when asked about ISIS (The Washington Post). He wants to knock out the source of their wealth, the primary sources of their wealth, which is oil. Trump has called for monitoring mosques (“Fear of Terrorism Lifts Donald Trump in New York Times” Jonathan Martin and Dalia Sussman) and plans on barring Muslims from entering the United States. So, as we can see, Trump has a very defensive move to play whereas Sanders may have a neutral tactic.
There are several issues that have manifested themselves in the political arena in regards to our schools and the education being provided. The issues range from who controls and makes the decisions for our schools, to educational reform to teacher certifications, to the trend of free choice of school and funding and how are students fairing in the modern age of school reform. Sanders would like to promote free college tuition to those who can’t afford it and he also wants to encourage affordable early childhood education because it is fundamental to the child’s future. All students deserve the opportunity to receive an affordable, quality education from the earliest stages of schooling to high-level degrees (“Bernie Sanders on education”. feelthebern.org). Children of families which are undocumented and are living here also need to get a fair opportunity to stay in the states and get a proper education and contribute to our growing economy. Sanders is trying to find a way so that everyone gets decent, affordable education. Trump, on the other hand doesn’t even talk about all of that. He just strongly opposes the Common Core. He believes it should stay at the local level. “We’re rated number twenty-eight in the world and yet we’re rated number one in terms of paying per student, per pupil. We’re rated number one. There’s a big difference between number one and number two. It’s a tremendous difference. So we spend more per student than any other country in the world and yet we’re number twenty-eight and we have third world countries that are ahead of us in education. Common Core is no good. You have to do it locally and it’s going to be much better. We’ll do much better. You’ll see it zoom up in the list” says Trump when asked to give his opinion on education in general (Donald Trump on Education). He has not spoken of anything else in terms of education so far. On the contrary of Sanders’ plans to improve the chances of people learning, Trump is planning to change the education system instead!
Ernest Hemingway once said that courage was “grace under pressure.” The two presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have put this proposition to the test. And how each of them responded revealed the type of person he is and the type of president he would make: Trump shows himself as more of a business icon, but Sanders has opened immense new possibilities as a compassionate person and serious candidate for president.