Im saying this bc education — my kids education; global education — means a helluva lot to me. For those who are calling Obamas free college plan a dicey flourish of socialism, I ask that you step back and look at the bigger picture. The U.S. used to lead the world in quantity of college graduates and quality of college education. But now other nations (Qatar, for example) are making education an accelerated priority, and inviting the best minds in the world to their Education City complex. Finland and the Netherlands have kids in public schools who are outstripping ours in basic STEM skills. We lead the world in cost of college tuition, and that may be it. We have some very highly paid college presidents out there. My alma mater, Carnegie Mellon, is at least $65,000/year; Harvard is no doubt more. Our hidden Ivys, private lib arts colleges, and state schools may be significantly less, but at $30K-50K/year, thats still a lot for most middle-class families today. I only had one child to educate, but my friends have families of two or more kids. American democracy is becoming increasingly oligarchic, which will be compounded when its only the upper echelons who can afford to send their children to college. And look at where the rest of the world stands: There are at least 7 million children in the world who live in countries are so conflict-ridden, they cant receive education without constant disruption, much less threat to life and limb. Some of them beg in the streets to acquire funds, then walk miles to a school (a village hut) where they can pay a teacher who also walked miles to teach. And in the world at large, approx. 219 million Millennials are out of work, and/or not pursuing educational goals. Thats a lot of uneducated, undirected young people. But back to us. How on earth do you plan to sustain a democracy without literate citizens? Right now we have more Millennials out of college and out of work than any preceding generation, and Millennials in sheer size alone match the Boomers (about 70 million). Thats a lot to leave uneducated. Ironically, theyre also the most visionary and computer-literate generation, so these kids could go far if given the assistance. Make this a story about socialism run amok if that affirms your conservative dogma, and complain there arent enough Horatio Algers out there, but just remember it was US who screwed the economy for these kids. Itll take a national village to help them attain degrees, and itll require a global village to make sure our kids go to work with counterparts across the world who are as literate. The lower our literacy levels, the higher the street cred for destructive forces like terrorism. What kind of world do you want?
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 20:43:19 +0000
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