Stop the Insanity: Education IS the Economy, Stupid!

Stop the Insanity
Education IS the Economy, Stupid!

I’ve heard more than one person recently quip, “It’s the education, stupid.” They’re explaining the emergence of “alternative facts.” Or they’re trying to explain the results of certain elections. Or they’re giving context to the actions of any number of public figures.

And there is something to it—this thought that some significant segment of our nation’s population is dangerously uninformed, ill-equipped to productively contribute to the healthy discourse that prevents our democracy from falling apart.

Listening to what passes for discourse these days, it’s not hard to have the impression our leaders and our fellow voters are not as deeply versed in the issues as they ought to be. And that a direct result is that a lot of not-so-smart decisions are being made, and then ratified.

An educational deficit—a deficit that prevents people from developing the critical self-discipline to study issues thoroughly, think them through and, in an articulate fashion, to act on them—would seem to explain many of the worrying things we see and hear.

There’s an expression that it’s more dangerous to half-know a matter than to know nothing about it. I don’t know who said it but I’m guessing it was uttered a long time ago because these days, a lot of people appear to be comfortable pontificating with far less than fifty percent of an issue under their belts. One is sometimes tempted to believe the qualifying figure is closer to three percent. (Which, coincidentally, is the portion of its budget that the federal government’s spending on education.)

But I think it’s wrong-headed—or, at least, futile—to articulate it like this.

This whole smart-stupid, good-education-versus-bad-or-no-education thing is—I believe—part of why we’re in our current situation. You may have noticed a lot of people out there feel disenfranchised, cut off, shut down, and fed up with the presumably well-educated folks who’ve been running this country’s show for a good long time.

All those sleek big city, Ivy-educated elites have made regular Americans feel, well, stupid. Which leads to anger. Which leads to venting. Which leads to not just ill-informed, but destructive choices at

ballot boxes and elsewhere. Which leads to…

So, we College Educateds opining that education’s the Big Problem—it seems to me—makes things worse. If nothing else, it emphasizes education as a differentiating force; not the leveling, empowering, motivating one it ought to be.

Imagine a politician saying the following, “As Americans, we are dangerously undereducated on key issues that will determine the well-being of this and future generations. I am therefore championing an unprecedented investment in our nation’s schools so that our children will be less ignorant and the damage being done by our recent ill-informed decisions can, one day, be undone.” I think that politician would have trouble stirring up even his or her most dedicated canvassers with a message like that.

But, you know what we Americans will get sufficiently riled up about? Yes, my fellow geniuses, that’s right—the Economy. The Economy—even if we don’t quite understand how it works—we know when it’s working. And, when it’s not.

As a political issue, the Economy has two big things going for it that Education doesn’t. First, while there are complexities and exceptions, the Economy can generally be portrayed as a non-partisan topic. Poor people, rich people, coastal people, interior people, northern people, southern people, religious people, irreligious people—we all can tell when the economy is doing well (or badly). The results are right there at the gas pump, the grocery store, the casino, the liquor store, the monthly credit card statement. And, in this world of hyper-partisanship, the only issues that have a chance of surviving our political-crossfire culture are the ones that carefully find a path down the center of the aisle, straying not a step to the left, nor one to the right.

Second, unlike Education, the Economy does not inhabit the dreaded Long Term Results Column. Politicians talk about the world we’re leaving our grandchildren, but it’s seldom the keystone of whatever argument they’re making.

But, as more than one successfully re-elected politician can attest, and as the shockwave emanating from the recently distressed stock market remind us—significant changes in the Economy can happen swiftly. Immediate changes to economic policy can have immediate effects.

So, here’s the big idea: let’s marry these two topics and drive them both forward. Right now.

Let’s make education a wallet-filling topic. Let’s never fail to stress the short-term economic benefit of educational investment. Be it in school buildings or in giving decent salary to our millions of local-economy-stimulating educators.

And let’s stay out of the weeds of standardized testing and which versions of history we’re teaching. For Pete’s sake, let’s let the intelligent discourse of a solidly educated population settle which Facts are Alternative, and which aren’t.

Let us simply and clearly resolve that we all stand by a fundamental curriculum built around the three Rs. I would love if we were all at the bleeding edge of biological and computer sciences (and had minors in Greek philosophy), but let’s please just focus on giving our fellow citizens—and their, and our, children—the fundamental tools with which they can grow up to be biologists or astronauts or truck drivers or preachers or authors. Well, maybe not that.

Look, we all know—in the grand scheme, in the long-term, in the history that will written about this great republic—that it’s all about Education.

But, for the moment, given the choices we have, and the levers right now available to us, can we please not say, “It’s the Education, Stupid.”

And, instead, “Education IS the Economy.” And let’s leave stupid out of it altogether.

The only stupid thing is going to be if can’t get our nation to spend more than 3% of its vast wealth on ensuring the sort of educational foundation from which a citizen can become an actively engaged and productive member of society. A competently educated populace, I think we can all agree, possesses thorough reading, writing, and math skills.

And, as I hope we forever continue to articulate it, investing in this critical infrastructure is Economics 101.

—James Patterson

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