Underfunded Education in
America
Education is one of the most vital and essential parts of
any individual’s life in order to become successful, education is the key for a
nation to succeed and stand out from the rest of the world, and education is
the foundation for the development of a person’s criteria and potential.
If education really is so important and vital to not
just individuals but to an entire nation for success then why is it
in America that more money goes to inmates than to it public students every
year?; on average upwards of 30,000 dollars for annual inmate sending (cbsnews
2012) compared to 10,000 dollars for annual student spending (cnn 2012). The
big issue in America is that people understand how important education is but
simply do not put the money or effort to improve the problem significantly. The
United States ranks 17th overall in the world in education which is concerning
for many people (Shepherd 2010), especially students from American that not
only want to succeed in the U.S. but internationally as well.
So if education is so important why not fund public
education better to improve the National ranking and become smarter more
rounded people. Why not take money from sources such as prison systems which
spend three times as much on inmates annually than the nation does on students,
and move that money towards better educating people, which could in a way lower
crime by making people more intelligent and intricate citizens of
society which prevents people from having the need to commit crimes
from money because they will already have money from having a career after
being well educated throughout their youth. Providing good education to society
will make the United States a more respectable nation and help its people not
only succeed but be in demand all over the world.
It has been proven that a
link exists between educational funding and incarceration rates, the
link is that schools within poor districts that have very little funding and
can't afford good staff members, have much higher rates of student drop-outs
and incarceration rates from students that came out of these poor
school districts. All this compared to students who attended rich school
districts that gave students many privileges other schools don’t have,
such as better teachers and technology to improve education; these
school graduates tend to be successful and vital members of society (Wald
2003). Plain and simple, better education will lower crime and decrease prison
expenditures, so America needs to spend money on education to lower
expenditures in prison; spend money to save money.
There are many solutions to fund schools better, and give
more money to the American education system. As mentioned before a good way to
get money is to get money from the prison system and away from the inmates,
others could be by raising taxes; although people will surely complain for a
raise in taxes, certainly this would be for a great cause that will surely pay
for itself in the future. Americans seem to be fixated on the idea
that immigrants are "taking our jobs" but in reality it is as simple
as realizing that most immigrants are better educated than Americans,
meaning that immigrants aren't taking jobs, there are simply better suited for
the job, thus they get better job opportunities here than U.S.
citizens themselves for lack of educational. All this issues and many more
could fix and improve America significantly, this is why more money needs to be
set for education and become world leaders not only with strength power as
America is right now, but with brain power which is much more respectable.
References:
Wald,
J. and Losen, D. J. (2003), Defining and redirecting a school-to-prison
pipeline. New Directions for
Youth Development, 2003: 9–15. doi: 10.1002/yd.51
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