The Cultivation of Education
The price of education has begun to play more to absurdities than certain rationale. As the economy lingers in uncertainty our nation-wide school system has apparently fallen to even lesser degrees than before. In a Huffington Post editorial piece, Bail out Our Schools by former Secretary of Labor and Professor at Berkley Robert Reich, explains that $4.35 billion in federal funds have now been designated for the nation’s public schools by the Obama administration. However, with such an economic downturn even such a generous amount will have us breaking even at best.
The recession seems to have dug into our foundations now eating away at the basic standards of quality of our nation’s education which were already low to begin with. Educated men and women in positions of power have abused their titles of leadership in order to profit and we continue to find new ways to suffer at their lack of character. Our attempts to try to reconcile their mistakes have only led to bailouts on their part which has been misused time and again. As Reich says, “we’ve got our priorities backwards. Our schools are the engines of human capital, and if we don’t bail out public education we face a bigger economic Armageddon years from now.”
An investment in education as a kind of future capital gain sounds like an interesting plan, but even more so it sounds like a humane plan. Our nation as a whole could slowly regain its composure and expand into the higher quality it should boast. Every citizen deserves the right to grow in knowledge and cultivate their character. A lacking in financial reform will only lead to a decrease in both, and then we will be truly sorry for the way our country is run. With the future workers and leaders infiltrating our economic and governmental systems having lesser educations we can assume their character will be lacking even more so than those we have in charge now.
A true education means understanding the responsibilities of the depth of your knowledge. Students lacking in the proper spectrum of learning will only be doomed to repeat the mistakes of our present leaders. If they can’t learn from school systems with adequate programs then how can we expect them to learn something as important as how to manage their own actions? Ethics is a big part of character development and true growth comes as part of a sound education. Martin Luther King Jr.’s sentiment that students must be encouraged to expand their minds and their characters matches Reich’s statement that “over the longer term we must shift incentives away from financial capital toward human capital.” If we don’t work to encourage the culture of our minds our hearts will surely follow suit.