Can you really persuade people?

It seems like it might be futile to try to persuade people to change from our current system where math, sciences and English  are the main focuses of education, today it seems more about test scores and saving money then what might be the best for children.

I went to school before no child left behind or race to the top, but right about when there were fairly large tax cuts that ended up causing a large drop in funding to public education program. When I was in middle school Spanish and French were offered to middle school students, by time I was a sophomore in high school those classes were no longer offered. As studies have shown the earlier one learns a second language the easier it was for a child to become fluent. A second language also helps with critical and creative thinking. It seems that removing these classes is only detrimental to a child's ability to think critically.

Some schools are also thinking about removing recess from recess from school to there is more time to teach the STEM classes. A recent article on NPR talked about this some schools move to remove or lessen recess time. http://www.npr.org/2013/11/07/243713419/trim-recess-some-schools-hold-on-to-childs-play

We have only move to having children that can answer text questions, but these children might not know how to use those ideas in a different way or what causes those answers to be correct.

I work with children everyday due to my job, I often make the children give me a reason why when they tell me they believe something. I start this long before children are able to think critically, this begins to build the ground work for critical thinking later.