'Making Stuff Smarter'? Not with slashed education spending.

While sweating along on my treadmill, I’ve taken a break from recorded Cooking Channel shows and am now watching the NOVA ‘Making Stuff’ series with the funny and engaging technology writer, David Pogue of the New York Times’ Pogue’s Pages. Today I viewed ‘Making Stuff Smarter’ - and my treadmill time flew by as I jogged along with jaw dropped and my imagination on fire with the possibilities posed by some of the newest advances scientists and engineers are making.

“Why, we could be talking about cures! Huge leaps forward in our national competitiveness! Jobs! New industries!” … uh, but not without highly trained and educated mathematicians, scientists, engineers, software developers and all the skilled support staff, research and development grants and government support that such complex undertakings would require.

Education. Like economics, everything comes home to that.

I can’t even believe that states are talking about making cuts to education. Not to mention the closely held desire on the part of many within the GOP to defund or outright do away with the U. S. Department of Education. Yup. We’ll home school the next generation of technology and science pioneers-on-the-prairie. Set up the next MIT on the kitchen table.

In this mornings Reno Gazette-Journal the headline said ‘Glick: Budget cuts place UNR at risk.’ The UNR President, Dr. Milton Glick, says that the “prospect of $59 million in cuts by July 2012 puts the University of Nevada, Reno’s role as an economic driver for the community and state at risk.” You have to wonder that it even needs to be said.

To have to remind everybody that a robust, thriving educational system from K-12 and beyond is the gasoline of your economic engine seem ludicrous. And yet, this is what Nevada’s political right would have. And, it makes for great political theatre, too. Along with this headline, were others raising dire warnings of Reno residents fearful of firefighter and police cuts, to the possible closing of the state program that preserves records for state and local governments.

This is an old political game, where legislators threaten cuts - deep, painful ones - that will directly affect the average citizen, who will then squawk loudly, insist that everything be put back the way it was - and somehow it will be apparent that taxes must go up. Somehow, in the background and under the radar, the real money pits for the state or federal budget go rolling merrily along untouched, and the corporate freeloaders ( mining, gaming, ‘redevelopment’ voodoo and taxpayer subsidized big business ) pitch in a dollar or two, and whistle on down the avenue.

In better times, we might be able to get away with this nonsense. The rest of the world has nearly caught up with us in education, innovation, and technological development. We simply cannot afford to slip further behind as a state or a nation. If we do, it will take generations to catch up, if at all.

Nevada is not alone in this. A quick look on a Google search of ‘defund education’ brings up a lot of ‘hits’. But while most arguments about education funding - or defunding - fall into screeds against one political party or the other, the salient point - that education spending saves America money and has a demonstrated Return on Investment  - seems to get lost in the ideological battles.

Of course a world-class education is expensive. But a mediocre education is far more expensive in the social and public consequences that follow. Look at the ballooning costs going to prisons in America as the funding for education has declined. You don’t need a doctorate to connect those dots.

Unfortunately, this isn’t by accident. In Arizona, of the $185 million dollars the state received in stimulus funds, Gov. Jan Brewer continued to push for education cuts, gave a paltry $6.6 million to education while extending $78 million to corrections. She knows where the profits are, and probably the campaign donors. Corrections are now very, very big business.

“According to the Tucson Citizen, in total, the three in-state universities now only receive $702 million while corrections receives $957 million (nearly a billion dollars), an interesting observation given the deep connections between the private prison industry, which seeks to incarcerate as many people as possible for profit, and Brewer and state Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa.” Betrayal, by Athena Salman, January 31, 2011

Is this really where we want to send our limited resources? Is this the best we can do for our kids, our economic security, our future? Is this where you build tomorrow’s discoveries? In prisons?

In Nevada, meanwhile, we’ve taken a page out of Gov. Jan Brewer’s playbook, and spending on prisons grew 103% from 1996 to 2006, as prison populations grew by 58%. It is projected to grow 60% by 2016 according to the Nevada Prison profile data compiled by Pew Charitable Trusts, Public Safety Performance Project. Such has been the true cost of our state’s unprecedented growth in the last couple decades. It’s certainly something to be proud of, right?

Spending more of our limited resources on mostly non-violent offenders rather than educating them to be giving back via technological innovation may not destroy our country immediately, but it will be a slow death. A slow death for those with life-threatening illness who are waiting for a cure. A slow death for our national pride and competitiveness as the rest of the world catches up and passes us by. A slow death for our once thriving economy as we descend further into selling each other insurance, online gaming, tee-vee ‘reality’ shows and fast faux-food meals - AKA nothing of any real lasting value.

Say it ain’t so, Governor Sandoval.

-maven

P.S. for a further look at how education spending gives back far more than is spent read: The Costs and Benefits of An Excellent Education for All America’s Children Leeds Teachers College, Columbia University, January 2007