Too Important to Trust to the Government

An infamous libertarian in southwest Idaho died -- but left a legacy: a billboard on the edge of town that cycle's through various diatribes.

Currently one states that "education is too important to be entrusted to the government."

What an amazing summation, or confession of complete failure! If one looks past this yet one more clever, all-too-easy and increasingly familiar barrage of criticisms toward the American government, the depressing aspect is that an increasing number of our citizens have become so cynical that more and more, they genuinely do not trust -- or at least, don't seem to want to trust or support our government.

This begs the question: has the American experiment finally failed?

America was established on the premise that "we, the people" could collectively determine a course of action that was fair, just and favored to at least a majority of our citizenry -- in a manner that the minority would accept the will of the majority -- knowing that they had the right for dissent and the opportunity to revise, add or delete previous actions if they could but convince a new majority of their self-perceived superior position.

In other words, rather than be left to the mercy of one omnipotent and fallible individual, that we believed in our collective wisdom to find the best course of action, along with the ability to continuously revise and improve as became warranted -- based on the abilities of people from within our ranks to convince a sufficient number of others collectively in order to create a new majority -- subject of course, that these new revisions similarly were subject to even further, later revisions or deletions.

Ours was a unique, grand experiment, that through a republican form of electing leaders to represent the masses (holding these leaders accountable to the people they both lead and represented by means of setting timelimits for office that could only be continued if re-elected) that we could best serve and maintain justice than any single monarch could.

We recognized that inherent in this republican form of democracy, there would be disagreement and not all would always get what they wanted -- but this was acceptable in the knowledge that compromise and amendment would often be needed in order to wield a majority so that those whose arguments held merit would most likely be able to help at least to some degree in the forming of our decisions. Inherent in that, was the belief that ultimately decisions would achieve a level of effectiveness and justness as a result of our collective wisdom.

The blanket statement that education is too important to be left to government implies that either our government is not motivated to seek what is best for we the people, or is not capable. Either way - if this is true - democracy in America has failed.

The implication -- assuming it is consistent with the other diatribes -- is that education should be run by private enterprise. That somehow, the profit motive as controlled by Adam Smith's "invisible hand" would be the best way to establish an educational system for empowering our citizenry for coping and competing in today's global market and world of technology.

What saddens me and worries me most is that energy and time spent on attacking the government does not seem to be an effective or constructive way of deriving necessary revisions, adjustments, additions or deletions. It does not seem to be the smartest method for trying to ascertain wise choices. Rather it seems devisive, counter-productive and destructive as it promulgates contempt, anger, intolerance and discouragement.

I don't believe that we can truly afford this degree of destructiveness nor lack of constructive effort to fully confront the immense challenges that we all face. I don't believe that with the immensity of what we face that we can spare any significant segment of our citizenry withholding efforts to work collectively toward solution.

Yes, we need diverse ideas and perspectives, but we need unity in purpose. We can not afford to fall short.

We absolutly need an educational system truly capable of equipping our citizenry as we rush to meet the challenges we face in this new global economy. And therefore, we all need for our educational system to be altered and improved. But we need to seek continuously a sense of unity, and strive to find areas of agreement from which to continually build upon.

I belive that because education is so crucial to the welfare of our citizens, it is exactly the government who should most be responsible and involved in its development and implementation. And implicit in this, should be the constant realization and consensus that any time the government falls short in its effort, it should not be abandoned, but rather should be confronted and utilized all that much more.