Education

Years ago a neighbor made a comment to the affect that since our kids are grown, why should we have to pay to educate children of others. I would like to think that the question does not reflect a common point of view but following are my thoughts on the topic. The question is aimed at public education and may boil down to why should the general population pay for something that is of benefit to an individual or a family and is of no consequence to the community?
Jonas Salk, the inventor of the vaccine that eliminated polio was not a relative of the masses that were spared the pain of the dreaded disease. Charles Manson was not the son of the Tates whose daughter he and the gang he led murdered so brutally in the 60s. The society as a whole benefits or suffers from the actions of other people’s children and thus it is to the benefit of everyone that we produce the “best”. In the industrialized world where we do not rely on our children to care for us in old age, the major benefit derived by the family of a well educated child comes down to “bragging rights”.
Though there are many factors that go into the quality of our next generation, education is certainly one of them. Public education was first came into being in China during the reign of Kublai Khan, the Mongol conqueror. It was introduced in England hundreds of years ago when the general population won the right to vote. It occurred to the powers to be that if they were going to have a democracy where everyone voted for the government that will run the country the population needs to have at least the ability to read and write so as to be somewhat informed. I have found that a lot of political nonsense stems not from the fact that the population in some areas is stupid but that it is uninformed. There was a pole conducted in one of the Carolinas recently where one of the questions was whether Hawaii is a State. More than 40 or 50% of the population and more than 60% of Republicans said it was not. Given that understanding, it is not totally irrational than to say that the President, born in Hawaii, is not a citizen. With today’s easy access to information one would think people would be better informed. I guess the issue is quality and not quantity of information. Unfortunately, most swords cut both ways and politicians often use the abundant channels of communication available to intentionally misinform their constituencies to advance their own cause.
The current administration has spent a significant amount of time talking about education. In fact last week I saw the president at a “back yard” meeting in Ohio where, when asked about our economic future, he reiterated the point that with advances in technology, a society will need a better and more technically educated workforce to compete. He also pointed out that whereas a decade ago we were first in people graduating from college, we are now twelfth. I believe he is correct in his assertion. Things that were done by brute force more and more are done using technologically advanced tools and methods and the nature of the workforce will need to be better educated going forward. Besides better educated, I believe the workforce will also need to be smarter.
In my experience educated does not necessarily mean smart though there is some correlation. Education, however, is used as an indicator that the probability is higher that someone is smart in the case of someone educated than not and the higher the education the higher the probability. Therefore we need to make sure that we have all of our “smart” young people available for the demands of the new economy. If we are depriving the poorest of our population the opportunity for a good education, we will decrease the number of people we can pick from for those tasks demanding the best thinking abilities.
I would like to use a sports analogy to clarify this point. Say I want to build the best basketball team in the world. Very great height or agility are strong assets in Basketball. Let’s suppose that the only kids I have to choose from are the inner city and rural kids who have not much else to do summers but play basketball. I am missing out on a great number of youths who are both tall and agile from the more affluent community because they never get seriously involved with basketball. Instead of being able to select a team of the tallest and most agile players from the entire population I am restricted to selecting from only a portion of the population and the team I put together will be inferior to one I could have had were I able to include the affluent in my selection of players.
In the same fashion by not providing a good K-12 education to the inner city and rural kids, they don’t go on to college. Since a degree is the stamp of approval for intelligence, They will never get into the pool of “smart” people needed for future economic success, thus decreasing the probability of our continued economic leadership. The gap between the wealthy and poor is widening with the population of poor growing disproportionately. If K-12 education continues as it is and college becomes more costly, with especially advanced degrees available only to the wealthiest, we will be playing with a team selected from an ever-shrinking portion of our population. (I don’t buy the argument that the wealthiest are also genetically superior so the pool of smarts is in that group anyway. At best the bell curve is shifted slightly if at all) Thus with education also the key credential for positions of leadership, we will diminish the strengths of our leaders and thus our great nation.