Education Matters US

While reading this weeks Carnival of Education I came across a post entitled, Unable to educate. As I read it, all I could think about was how we have become a blank check society. The hallmark of this society is that the government has a blank check they can use to take care of everyone. If you have a baby, they’ll give you $5000; they’ll give you a $1000 each year towards your retirement. If you can’t pay your mortgage, the government will bail you out. It goes on and on. We have raised a generation that no longer values hard work, they value free money and the politicians who absolve them of any personal responsibility. [Emphasis mine in the excerpts below]

This woman is making a decision out of financial reasons. The financial reasoning here is flawed however. It appears that she has ignored or has not researched many options. Some of these options are scholarships, grants, community colleges, and writing seminars presented by writers at local libraries. These options make continued education more affordable. These other options require more time, hard work and commitment.

The answer to many people in our society today is the government should take care of me. Her basic argument is that the government should want people improving themselves through education and because of that the government should be willing to pay for it. Basically, she is arguing that all education should be free and there should not be any hard work or personal responsibility on her part to receive it. The arguments here illustrate she is a member of the blank check society.

She also argues that the government is now making money off of what used to be free. I believe she is getting her arguments mixed up, since a college education has never been free.

The argument now moves to our government monopoly we call public school system. I would like to ask her why spending over $500 Billion dollars is not enough to educate the children in our government run schools? How can private schools, charter schools and home schoolers provide a better education for less than our government schools? How much more money does the government have to spend?

The answers to these questions are very simple. The government is the problem, not the solution. The government is setup by bureaucrats to benefit themselves instead of the children or the taxpayers. Sure people will benefit, but only after the bureaucracy has siphoned off its share first. The more we the people allow the government to take care of us, the more freedoms we lose and the more control these bureaucrats gain over our lives and money. If you want to have more money and freedom, stop asking the government for handouts. If you want to reverse the mentality of the blank check society, then reduce the size of government.