Education IS Important
Student to Professor: “Do I really need to know all this?”
Professor to Student: “Nope. The world will always need fry cooks.”
So we’re in the middle of an economic downturn, and everyone’s thoughts have turned to belt tightening and cutting back on spending. On a personal level, most Americans have begun taking long, hard looks at their lifestyle and finally asking themselves if maybe they might have been living just a tad above their means. Those that took the gamble of trying to live a life entirely based on credit have had the hard lesson of foreclosure and debt collection forced upon them by the very banks that promised an endless and steady supply of that very same credit. The government is, of course, bearing its fair share of blame, first for not controlling the willful excesses of Wall Street, then for apparently rewarding the bad behavior with bailouts of the most egregious offenders. Thanks to the collapse, tax revenues have fallen on both the national and local levels, and with deficits looming, talk has once again turned to bringing the traditional sacrificial lambs back to the chopping block.
It happens every time we face a budget crunch, but this time one of the cuts being bandied about by politicians secure in the comfort of leather lined offices and lifetime guranteed pensions at taxpayer expense, is one set of cuts that needs to be ignored: education. Read the rest of this entry »