Can't Stress it Enough: The Importance of Education

This past week, I (finally) finished reading Three Cups of Tea, a book that has been on my t0-read shelf for a long time. It's a non-fiction story about a man named Greg Mortenson, who, after getting lost in Pakistan after a failed attempt to climb K2, is struck by the need in the small mountainous villages of Pakistan for schools. He promises to return to one village to build a school for them after raising the money, but from there a whole enterprise was born. Today, he and the Central Asia Institute founded by Mortenson and his supporters, build schools in small villages all over Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was incredibly moved by this story, and I'm sure if I had not just spent more than I care to admit on supplies for my own classroom, I would have gone online and donated to his cause without hesitation.

However, I was more struck by Mortenson's message in America after 9/11 and the War on Terror began. He suggests, and I agree, that we do not do anything to help our cause or create any more goodwill toward Americans in the Middle East by being involved in conflicts in which we deliberately or as a side-effect destroy whole villages, promising aid to help the people who we may have disrupted, and then never sending the aid. This only opens the way for terrorist organizations with lots of money to fill the void, especially in education, and thus taking advantage of the desire for education of many non-extremist locals. They build schools because the government of Afghanistan has not, and because our promise of aid for schools has not come through, and churn out more young men who have been educated with an extremist curriculum full of western hatred. Mortenson argues that only by making education a priority (albeit a long-term one) can we ever hope to stop this area from being a hotbed for terrorism for good. A NY Times article circulating among people I know on facebook made a similar argument about education, specifically of girls, in the Middle East. Education is the single-best way to improve a region like this, that desperately needs it.

I can't help but think that Mortenson's ideas ring true in our country as well (and if we're going to give money away to other governments for education, I certainly hope we get some here too). While poor schools in America may not breed terrorism, they certainly do not help to improve things such as the high crime rate in urban areas, or help to improve the number of people who are on government aid and thus contributing to the strain on the nation's resources, or any other number of unpleasant statistics. We have just spent time bailing out big industries all over the country, realized that we seriously need to overhaul things like the healthcare system and social security, and more, and I cannot help thinking that by pouring more money into all of these systems, we are only helping (if we are helping at all) in the short term. We need to educate all of the children in this nation if we truly want to make things better, and yet education never seems to be at the top of anyone's priorities. Certainly, it is up there for most politicians, but it rarely makes it into position number 1 on the list of concerns the government must handle-but it should. A good education for all students is really in all of our best interests, just like it would be in the Middle East.

And by the way, I highly recommend Three Cups of Tea. You should absolutely read it if you have the time.