Useful vs worthless education

Another obvious weapon of mass construction is education.  Ironically, this can also be a weapon of mass destruction depending on how it’s wielded.  It can easily be used to spread propaganda as they tried to in Nazi Germany.  However, at its best, education is a tool used to empower and enhance people’s lives.  Education is nothing if it doesn’t lead to economic empowerment.  That’s a strong statement there, did you catch it?  That is not to say that education is worthless, but ask the recent graduate if their grad degree in history led them to gainful employment and if it did how long will it take them to pay off $100,000 or more and I’m sure if they’re honest they may in fact argue that their education was rather worthless in the long run.  Naturally, they received untold benefits from a well-rounded education I’m sure, but how much can you really contribute to a society if you’re busy paying off loans for 10 to 20 years?

How many MBA’s are now baristas I wonder?  It’s a sad state of affairs to be sure when we’re educating people on how to manage others only to realize we should’ve spent more resources on teaching them how to start and run their own businesses instead.  If we use education to empower people to start businesses, in the short term and long term that helps local, state and national economies get back on their feet. 

Our economy is rather perverse these days to where we have to bail out banks that are too big to fail.  That being said, how many of my readers are still banking at Bank of America, PNG, Wells Fargo, etc.?  If you didn’t approve the bail out, what have you done to prevent it from happening again?  Just something to consider there.  Do you know how hard it is to secure funding to start a small business from one of those major banks?  A much larger percentage of small business loans come from local banks to be sure.  If you want to invest locally then I suggest you start by banking locally.

There’s a reason Iran’s former president and others don’t want their children being educated ‘by the West’, surely I’m not the only one that sees that, right?  If a dictatorship has control over a population’s education and literacy materials, it makes them much easier to control.  Education represents a very real and present danger to dictatorships around the world.  Think what would happen if outside reading material made its way into North Korea!  The Bible is banned in that country and for good reason if you’re in the shoes of the dictator.

Education, ideally at least, leads to critical thinking in the minds of students.  They start asking more ‘Why is this the case’ questions instead of just swallowing everything they’ve ever been told.  This disrupts the status quo and makes change happen.  People who are benefitting from the status quo will of course object because they know that when the status quo is broken, they are in for a wake up call.  Why do you think most slave owners refused to educate their slaves?  As in the case of the dictator, they knew that as soon as their slaves were educated, they would not stand to live in slavery any longer. 

If you want to construct, you must educate.  Education lies at the heart of development.  In it of itself education is not enough as I’ll go onto argue in the next blog, but it is a wonderful start.