the November 14th issue of Time:

The importance of education, more specifically the funding of education is important to everyone regardless of the station. Higher educations levels are to the benefit of society as a whole as well as to the individual holder of the degree. It helps prevent crime, and isn’t that what people are always concerned with?
The statistics that link education and crime levels aren’t hard to find, but its interesting to me that the people that seems to care about the crime the most are instrumental in its festering and most unwilling to do anything to prevent it from happening, yet at the same time have no qualms with going to the fullest extent of the law to prosecute.

Education is also instrumental in the upward mobility and social stability of the nation and its residents. A solid education can put you in the position to live comfortably, (or at least that’s what its supposed to do). Looking at some of these things, one can’t help but wonder why, when the situation overall is quite simple, is it not happening? Americans used to work for the benefit of other Americans because it was the right thing to do. Now it seems very popular to work for the benefit of self regardless (and sometimes it seems to be a motivating factor) of the detriment to others, no matter how deeply others might be affected. As long as one has theirs, who gives a damn if anyone else gets theirs? Whether consciously or by circumstance, the end result is the same: its cheaper and vastly more beneficial to educate than incarcerate, but this country chooses to do otherwise, preferring punishment over prevention AND even though we all don’t go to jail, we all pay the price.