Education Should be Priority Number 2
The highest priority role of the U.S. federal government should be defense. We could have a very long debate indeed on the difference between defense and military adventurism but, we won’t. Not here. Not now. Maybe later.
The second highest priority should be education. In the U.S., the job of education falls to the states. Thats a good idea except it is not working for most of the nation. Some of the states have created good universities but, we have to look to other countries to find students qualified to attend them. Although we still have many of the top universities in the world, our K-12 educational system is continuing it long decline.
So why is this important? Because if we want to maintain our high standard of living we will have to compete in a much larger world than we did in the past. The iron curtain has fallen. China, India, and Eastern Europe have joined the free market as both consumers and suppliers. That about 3 billion more people and a substantial number of them are well educated.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the solution to improving our educational system. The U.S. spends about as much per pupil on K-12 education other industrialized nations – although we do spend more of that money on non-education items such as transportation and sports than they do. But if the U.S. is in 24th place in math and science education, there are 23 places we can look for ideas.
We need to focus on how to improve and stop just trying to find someone to blame.