Thank you! There is actually someone interested in politics and current events who also happens to be a teenager! Unfortunately for the entire American population, most people nowadays are more concerned with who made it past the voting round on last night's American Idol rather than the morality of Manning's submission of military documents to Wikileaks.
But to the point, I have an interesting topic that more or less to do with the SOTU address: education. What subjects in education, particularly high school, ought to be addressed and why? How do we reconcile subjects like science with the religious beliefs of people? And what are the common arguments concerning education when it is brought to the floor of Congress?
My quick response to this is that only two things in education truly matter: math and science. Whereas other subjects such as history and English may be important, they are not as critical to developing the technology that much of the future economy will rest on. Since science is, in and of itself, a philosophy that adheres to a principle of creating practical theories instead of relying on simple explanations that only evoke the reason of an absolute being, science and religion can never be reconciled in a school setting. Finally, when politicians talk about education, they talk about it as if it is abysmal and they are the only ones who can fix it. While the former may be true, we must keep in mind that it is not all hopeless. A simple fix like charter schools are never the answer. Rather, the change and improvement in education must come from the values society holds.