Education is the bedrock of any innovative and productive society. I have always believed this, because since I was young my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins have all instilled in me the importance of a good education. An education is not a good that can be bought and automatically used. Education is a tool that one invests in and over the years there will be increasing returns. In order to have a bright future at the forefront of innovation, technology and industry the United States must seriously evaluate and restructure the existing public school system.
Thomas Friedman’s
March 11th column addresses the issue of education versus natural resources. As Mr. Friedman points out in his column, the PISA scores, Program for International Student Assessment, in countries rich in natural resources versus PISA scores in countries low in natural resources show that education is a much better predictor of the GDP than natural resource reserves. Creating and fostering a society where cultivation and growth versus extraction are valued is crucial to the mentality that goes along with natural resource acquisition. If there are no resources to acquire from the land then there is no reason to value extraction. Instead a society can focus on cultivating what already exists and foster innovation that will bring new ideas.
That does not even begin to address the necessity of having a higher degree in order to obtain a well paying job. Without a college degree there are very few good options for jobs and even less if one does not have a high school diploma. The United States has evolved into a more sophisticated, white-collar-dominated economy. In order to continue the rich history of innovation here and move the US on the upward trajectory, we need to reevaluate our public school system so that the system can more adequately prepare future generations for the economy that they will enter.
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