Education

A society could be judged on the merit of its average individual.

mer•it -n: 1. claim to respect and praise; excellence; worth

We've acknowledged the commonalities of people in general. Assuming good health all can perform some degree of manual labor at their base level. Every individual can lift and carry an object from point A to point B or dig a hole from here to there. In a simple agricultural society there is little else that need be carried out to sustain human life. Ours, of course, requires much more to continue functioning.

Primary and secondary school administer lessons on a few basic subjects to varying degrees: language comprehension, mathematics, science and social studies (I'm tossing history, geography and government in 'social studies'). It is also common for foreign language and art to be offered but we will consider these extraneous for now. By the time students graduate high school they should be generally equipped to operate as capable members of their society. They have some sense of national identity and in the course of their jobs can communicate with other people, execute basic arithmetic and understand their position training and implications.

The idea is that K through 12 yields productive citizens. In reality, college is a luxury for the elite. All the knowledge you need to live a productive life in the United States is gained by the time you leave high school. The government claims an inherent stake in the education of its people. Every state by law requires children to attend school until they are at least 16¹, some until 17 or 18. Given that government is the people and people are the government it's in the best interest of both to maintain a knowledge standard.

Public education is funded by the government which, like a business, does things in a manner that it can benefit from. Before you jump to conclusions, let me reiterate that--ideally--the best interest of the people is in the best interest of the government. Better people make a better nation. It would make no sense to argue against that. So government facilitates the aggregation of resources for schools and requires that citizens learn certain basic skills so they can contribute.

Again, the quality of our society could be judged by evaluating the worth of an average member; id est, what we're taught in grade school. Suddenly things like benchmarks and standardized tests come to mind. Graduation rate. TAAS and TAKS. Grade point average. Legislation sets forth standards for academic achievement to establish the level of merit that every citizen should obtain. Given contemporary attitudes toward education, I'm left with a few questions:

•Why would any government want to reduce funding for public education?
•How could that possibly benefit those involved?
•When was education, if ever, more of a priority than it is now?
•Who would want to be a teacher, knowing the likely fate that awaits them?
•What would be the result of raising standards for achievement?
•Where does public money go if not to education?

It vexes me terribly when congress--state or national--goes looking for ways to reduce spending and quickly starts crossing "Funding for public education" off the list. That DOES NOT COMPUTE. What could they possibly be thinking? "Man, times are tough and we need more money available. Oh, here, let's hamstring our public schools and hope they still work it out." What if they don't? Can they not appreciate the notion that children are our future? Who would comfortably leave the fate of human capital and national resilience to chance? These are the days when people are taking a second look at past policies and evaluating their effectiveness to date. Wherever your political allegiances lie, the general consensus is "something's gotta change."

It's also widely known that teachers are paid very poorly on top of coping with un-parented children and heaps of bureacratic nonsense. I wouldn't want to work at a single school district that I've ever attended. It's this reality that makes the great teachers superb and the poor ones at least understandable. The quality of education follows the quality of our instructors. Their fate also is tied to funding which I understand exhibits a directly proportional relationship:

Less money → less [from] teachers = worse children → worse nation
More money → more [from] teachers = better children → better nation

I cast my vote for the latter.

1: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0112617.html