Public Education Top 10 for Mehlville Residents

I know your time is limited, so I'll keep this brief. Feel free to explore the source links for more information.

1. "Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading." - G. M. Trevelyan, historian

Education is not only about getting a job and making a living. Proper education is about developing the mind through creative and critical thinking - the ability to discern valid arguments and/or facts from invalid ones. 

2. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) 

Public education that does not focus on critical and creative thinking is failing education. Critical thinking has many facets, but protection is one of them. If you or your child (used interchangeably throughout the rest of this article) are technologically illiterate, you are both easy victims of programming tricks, manipulation and data-mining. If you are scientifically illiterate, you are likely to be a victim of pseudoscience. If you are historically illiterate, you are likely to be a victim of various political and social propaganda.

3.  "It has been said that we have not had the three R's in America, we had the six R's; remedial readin', remedial 'ritin' and remedial 'rithmetic." - Maynard Hutchins

The "six R's" are what much of America is mistakenly nostalgic about. In the manufacturing economy of the 20th century, the remedial "R's" were sufficient, but global competition and the global economy of the 21st Century call for the Two C's - Critical and Creative Thinking. 

4.  "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." - Derek Bok

While you can't just throw money at problems, money does matter. First imagine trying to operate a $100 million bare bones school district with $0. A was released in 2008 that ranked school districts by return on investment. Of 523 school districts in Missouri, "only two Saint Louis County districts were listed in this elite group for their student achievement per dollar spent – Mehlville and Rockwood."  Take this ROI study and add $20 million to the annual budget. The possibilities are endless, while the cost to the average taxpayer are minimal.

5.  "It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers." - Anonymous 

A poor education is additive and cumulative. When a society is poorly educated, it is easy for them to fall into traps of consequence instead of pro-active foresight. War and violence are often the result of escalated, accumulations of ignorance. Just think of how much better off we would be if we had been spending $700 billion a year (worldwide) more on education instead of the military industrial complex (quality being the key word and defined above).

6.  The point is that poverty isn't just an idea, or a state of mind: it actually warps the mind. Some brains never even have a chance. - Jonah Lehrer

An educated brain is physically different than an uneducated brain. While from the outside the difference is hard to recognize, internally the structure and the density of the brain change based on your level of quality education. For instance, by the time they enter kindergarten, children born in to poverty hear 30 million fewer words spoken than their middle/upper socioeconomic status counterparts. Their brains are physically inadequate to learn and to make good choices.

7.  "It's incredibly difficult to teach or reach a child in the grip of poverty by middle-school. In other words, every intervention must start early, while the brain is still a wet ball of clay." - Jonah Lehrer

Outside of winning The Ovarian Lottery, the most effective way to overcome the previously mentioned 30 million word gap, and to better prepare children for lives of success is to provide universal early childhood education as soon as possible. The proven benefits of universal early childhood education includes programs like Parents as Teachers, and curriculum-based preschool.

8.  "Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.  It won't fatten the dog."  - Mark Twain 

For every dollar spent on early childhood education, $7-$12 tax dollars are saved in the future. Not only does universal early childhood education help children by providing them a better foundation for lifetime success, it is cheaper for taxpayers than not providing universal early childhood education. As a matter of fact, states like Michigan have literally saved billions of dollars. They save billions because it is cheaper to educate on the front end than it is pay for the resulting poverty and crime on the back-end. Nobody likes the overwhelming costs of welfare, homelessness, high crime rates, unemployment, etc. The best way to reduce those entitlement programs is to go to the heart of the matter, by breaking the cycle of poverty before it takes hold in a child's life.

9.  "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell

The practical facts of up and down, oxygen and hydrogen, and 4+4, are valuable to the act of living, but in making a life, it is even more valuable to know that knowledge is imperfect. The ability to change and adapt is perhaps the most important skill to learn in a 21st century education. Adaptability is another aspect of the "2 C's," Critical and Creative Thinking. We are born ignorant, not stupid. The problem with a 20th century education in a 21st century world is that we are still graduating and celebrating children of general ignorance, which results in painful stupidity.

10.  “The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles (and I would add multi-national corporations) who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance” - Thomas Jefferson

The value of public education isn't a new opinion. Not only did the writer of the Declaration of Independence and the Father of the Constitution advocate free and appropriate education for all, but it was also mandated in the original Constitution of Missouri in 1821. "Section 1. Schools, and the means of education, shall forever be encouraged in this state; ... and one school, or more, shall be established in each township as soon as practicable and necessary, where the poor shall be taught gratis."