Opponents of a national retirement program, commonly referred to simply as “Social Security,” tend to take the view that each person is responsible for their own costs of living and that a secure retirement is something to be enjoyed by those fortunate enough to have earned enough money throughout one’s lifetime to sustain themselves for 20 or more years without gainful employment. Such an attitude completely ignores the concept of gratitude and indebtedness we owe to our predecessors, assuming, incorrectly, that their own successes are completely independent of any other factors and are simply due to their own superior capabilities. According to these folks, each person is fully capable of planning for their retirement, and shouldn’t need to depend on government subsidies to enjoy their golden years. Indeed, their “why should I pay for you” comments show how little they appreciate the hard work that was put into their own upbringing and how little they understand the sacrifices made by preceding generations who created the progress this country has enjoyed.

You can believe what you want to, but I’m here to tell you that any success you may personally have is the result of many different people over many years and extends far beyond the powers of your own mind or capabilities. In order for society to function and progress, the combined efforts of all of its members are required, and as such, we all owe each other a debt of gratitude to some degree. Were it not for the care of our parents, we’d never make it into the world as responsible, productive adults. Were it not for our teachers, we would never learn the skills with which we support ourselves. Were it not for the desires or needs of individuals, we would not have jobs to support ourselves and would instead be a nation of subsistence farmers, scraping by just what we need to survive. We are all responsible to each other in this sense, and as such, we have a responsibility for each other too. One of those responsibilities is to assure that no one is left behind in poverty once their most productive years are behind them. As such, any national retirement program must have at its center this concept of shared responsibility, shared gratitude, and shared respect.

Like other tax-supported programs, the national retirement plan exists as a compact between the people and our government. The agreement has been that when you work, you deposit some of your wages into a social insurance fund. Your employer deposits a like amount as well. When you retire, you will receive a monthly stipend until you die. The government, who is entrusted to safeguarding the funds for their intended purpose, administers this fund. In theory, the number of workers paying into the fund at any one time would exceed the number of retirees withdrawing from the fund, keeping the fund solvent in perpetuity. But the theory has not held, and as a result, our national retirement program will be unable to hold up its end of the deal. The compact between citizens and government has been broken and the time has come to fix things up.

Although today’s retirees are receiving their promised returns, the rules for future retirees have been shifting over the years, raising the retirement age and preparing people for decreased returns. The reasons for this decline are fairly simple: there are more people retiring and drawing from the fund than there are to replace them, even in this age of dual income families, and wages haven’t kept pace to make up the difference. The other reason for the eventual collapse of the current system lies in the betrayal of government and their unwillingness to protect the funds for their intended purpose. Like so many other supposedly devoted taxes, our politicians have consistently raided the retirement funds over the years, replacing the actual money with worthless I.O.U.’s. Today’s workers have been told as much, the administration saying in effect that there will be no money for you when you retire. But go ahead and keep paying in anyway, because that’s how the system works.

Even without these major problems, the system itself fails to offer retirement security to all of our citizens equally, something that any tax based program should strive to do. The most glaring example would be for stay-at-home moms, who because of their absence in the business world have no earnings per se. But their indispensable tasks of rearing our young is worth its weight in gold and should be recognized as the valuable service that it is. Any national retirement program must be offered to all legal citizens equally.

Reform must occur in two separate phases. We must stabilize they existing system to the point that it will meet most, if not all, of its obligations to the citizens who are nearing or are in retirement now. Further, it must figure out a way to make amends to the workers who have and will continue to pay in, knowing full well that they will be getting the short end of the stick. But rather than try to patch a clearly breaking system, we need to let it phase out in favor of a more equal, and arguably more efficient national retirement program.

Retirement programs exist so that we don’t have to work until we die. But for most of our working years, we are either obsessed with saving enough money to retire on or are completely oblivious to what we will actually require once we do retire or how we plan to get it. In today’s business climate, private pensions (which are designed to supplement the national retirement program using your own dollars) are shaky for many, with companies going bankrupt and fleecing employees out of years of built up retirement funds. The relationship between employees and employers has also drastically changed, with the lifetime employee almost being unheard of. The result is any number of smaller 401k plans without the ability to achieve compound growth. It is painfully obvious to many that their best source of income in retirement is likely to be social security funds. This is the reality we live in, and so if we endeavor to continue to offer a national retirement plan, we must think of completely new ways of designing it.

While keeping the existing program on life support is important, first I’m going to propose a national retirement plan for future generations of workers. I think that even though we need to try to fulfill the promises to the people of today, it is also our duty to create a more lasting system than we have now. For any reform of the current system would naturally have to include plans for continuation of some sort, and I believe that our current system is too screwed up to rebuild. Sometimes you really do need to start fresh.

I had originally planned to present my plan for an entirely new retirement program for future generations of workers in this essay, but that will now have to wait until next time. I felt that I needed to defend the concept of a national retirement plan once more before I could go on to explain my ideas. For it is essential to understand that a national retirement program is more than just a reshuffling of tax dollars from one person to another. The essence of our working life is the ability to some day kick our feet up and retire. This is one of the promises of America. This is a part of the American dream. It is something the we, as a society, have affirmed over the last 70 years through our continued support of a system that once was good, but now is sinking.

Social Security is really a widely encompassing description for a variety of government assistance programs including Medicare, Medicaid, disability benefits and retirement programs, to name the most common. Social Security programs, specifically the retirement program, have long been considered a perilous “third rail” for politicians, meaning that if you tamper with the existing program you will get stung badly, and if you attempt to reform the existing program you may well die, politically that is. As a result, the retirement element of social security has been on virtual cruise control, occasionally modified to accommodate changing dollar values, but on the whole remaining in its original form. Recently, this element of Social Security has been brought under the full glare of the spotlight as the current President has made this one of his “hills to die on.” Everyone has finally admitted that the current system can’t sustain itself in its current form indefinitely, and though predictions of its insolvency vary, they come to the same conclusion: something must be done.

It would seem to me though, that before we try to fix what will soon be broken, we should make use of this opportunity to reexamine not just the structure of our program, but our underlying reasons for having the program at all. What purpose does social security play in our society, beyond redistributing money from the working class to the retired class with the promise that today’s working class will be replaced by a future working class that will fund their retirement? Or does it represent some other values we hold? An honest answer to these questions should be essential in order to shape lasting reform, for each may necessitate completely different plans. And lasting reform should be the key, so whatever plan arises should remain flexible enough to accommodate changing future demographics and attitudes towards national retirement programs.

Why do we even have a social security retirement system? The original reason for creating a national retirement program was simple- that generation of Americans decided that no citizen should have to continue to labor day after day to make ends meet after reaching a certain age. And further, that no citizen who had spent their productive adult years working as a member of society should have to worry about starvation or poverty once they became too old to work. The former is a tribute to our elders, a thank you for years of service and a chance to enjoy ones later years free from the daily grind of making ends meet. The latter is a security blanket for ourselves, ensuring that even if things go bad, we will always have something to fall back on. At the programs inception, many millions had lost their life savings, their jobs, their homes, or all three in the Great Depression. A nation that had enjoyed decades of progression towards a modern society was suddenly plunged backwards leaving whole areas in abject poverty. At that time, families and neighbors had to depend upon each other for survival, sharing the resources they could get, passing along clothes and furniture and the like, and dividing up the bread so that everyone got at least a little bit each time. Social Security became an extension of this attitude where everyone helped everyone else just a little bit so that no person went without at least the basics of life.

So if Social Security was designed to keep those at the bottom from falling through the cracks, how did it become the massive behemoth of entitlement that it is today? Was social security ever meant to be an unqualified payout, a reward for reaching the finish line in one piece? To the generation now coming into retirement age, the largest retiring generation in history no less, Social Security was sold just that way- as a reward for reaching the finish line. And to that end, it has been left to flounder about. After all, government promised them it would be there, so why worry about it? Somebody should have been worrying though.

Originally, the number of able workers paying into the system (once it was established) outnumbered those drawing out by something like 15 to 1. Such a ratio was more than adequate to fund retirements and build future payout reserves. As a result, Social Security was widely touted by those of the middle and lower economic classes as a future nest egg that no one could take away, something unknown to previous generations of workers. Then, society was still largely agrarian with more children per family, so who could have foreseen the trend towards urban living and smaller and smaller families, resulting in a shrinking worker/retiree ratio? Even as the situation became more apparent, the focus of social security remained entrenched in the attitude that those monthly checks were a right of birth and any kind of reform was framed from that point of view.

So at this moment of change, we need to ask ourselves just what do we want social security to be about? Do we want a system that promises everyone a guaranteed payout by age 65? Do we want a need-based system that just supports those who don’t make enough money to quit working at age 65? Do we want both? Ironically, the answer to how someone views social security can be found in the name they use to describe it. The words “social security” imply a kind of safety net, something to keep someone from hitting rock bottom. Increasingly, the current debate is being described in terms of “retirement accounts,” which imply a guaranteed pension of sorts, regardless of ones financial situation. Perhaps we are actually talking about two separate issues that have been rolled up into one.

Personally, I have no problems with a national guaranteed retirement program, provided it was equitably applied and designed to account for disparate earning potential. Designed properly, such a program could cover everyone and would alleviate an individuals concern about generating enormous hordes of cash in order to survive ones golden years. Such financial freedom could allow more people the opportunity to fulfill career paths that typically offer less financially but may be more personally rewarding. It would offer people the chance to switch careers throughout their lives without worrying about losing their retirement savings. It could be flexible enough to allow people to increase its potential themselves while strong enough to provide real security in later years without additional personal contributions.

At the same time, we must recognize that social security is a term for helping people through tough times, but not necessarily a means of long-term support. Social security should more accurately describe our efforts to eliminate poverty and hunger and homelessness among our working class and families. Describing this debate in terms of “social security” only clouds the matter at hand. It is a debate about funding our retirement, about who should pay the bill, and about who reaps the rewards of a lifetime of hard work.

I remember learning back in school about the basic necessities for human life: food, water, shelter, and clothing. While the latter may at times be a matter of prerogative, the former three are indisputable necessities. When these are not available to us, we become incapable of functioning within societal parameters. When whole areas are afflicted with a shortage of these necessities, society breaks down completely. Man reverts to his more primal nature, securing these necessities for himself and his family without regard to others, fighting for these things if need be. It is with this understanding of the fundamental importance of securing these necessities of life that modern societies have created for themselves a social safety net for those who are having trouble meeting these basic needs. It is an imperfect safety net, to be sure, but the fact that it exists is a testament to the rational empathy of humanity.

In the 2006 Federal Budget, the U.S. has allocated the following amounts to aid in the fight against hunger, poverty, and homelessness: Health & Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Social Security Administration have a combined total of $105 billion dollars, or 11% of all discretionary spending. (This does not include Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid payouts, which are mandatory spending requirements in the budget.) By comparison, Defense receives $419 billion, or 44% of all discretionary spending. (This is not a complaint regarding defense spending. It is both necessary and important, but badly managed. But that is another discussion.) Energy and Justice each take about 2%, or $20 billion, and Education gets nearly 6% with $56 billion. The point of all these numbers is to show how much we are spending, financially, to help people in trouble obtain the basic needs of life. To me, $105 billion dollars is a lot of money. With that much money at hand, surely we could end hunger and homelessness, and maybe even poverty too. So why haven’t we?

It isn’t for a lack of effort, that’s for sure. There are thousands of private and governmental agencies whose stated mission is to assist those in need. However, despite them all, we have yet to conquer these problems. The poverty rate in this country is around 12%. The hunger rate, defined as “frequently skipping meals or eating too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day, due to a lack of food” affects nearly 10 million people. Each year, some 2 million people experience some degree of homelessness; increasingly these people are displaced families with children. And while poverty may be a tougher problem to handle, certainly hunger and homelessness could be eradicated.

As I see it, the problem is twofold: inefficient or ineffective management of funding, and attitude. With $105 billion dollars to work with, and remember, this is just federal tax dollars and doesn’t include the additional billions pouring in from state and private sources, we should certainly have enough money to address the problem. But when you come down to things, this isn’t about having enough money, and it isn’t about having enough compassion and desire. It’s about our societal ethic that values contribution and productivity and it’s about our attitude towards those who fail to meet these expectations of society. It’s about a bureaucracy that prefers to maintain the status quo for all the wrong reasons, and in the process, robs us of our taxes and deprives the needy of their dignity.

Truth be told, in today’s uncertain economic world, even the richer among us is just a heartbeat away from needing the help of our social services. Another stock market crash, a debilitating injury or illness, an outsourced job…any of these could befall us and send us packing into the street if we are not prepared. And let’s face it; most Americans do not have the cash reserves to weather a lengthy period of strife. Most barely have enough to make it through a few weeks without a steady flow of income. Yet, whether we admit it to ourselves or not, most of us who have never needed to rely on the social safety net view those that do need help as either inferior or just plain useless. In truth, it’s often just a matter of luck. This is not to say that there haven’t been and won’t continue to be people who are just “gaming the system,” but to paint all in need with this same brush is slander of the worst kind.

As I said earlier, part of the problem lies in our attitude towards those who need our help. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a government aid agency has probably experienced a great level of discomfort. If you think the Department of Motor Vehicles is a nightmare, try navigating through food assistance or housing programs or trying to collect unemployment. You can almost feel an underlying attitude of scorn or contempt. This bias displays itself in the attitudes of government workers as they shuffle through file after file, navigating the red tape of micromanagement, or in the wayward glance of the motorist who ignores the panhandler at the intersection. And the mountains of regulation created by politicians, which only serve as a barrier to those who truly need help, further expand this type of contempt. Obscenely enough, many of the programs that would provide assistance are created with this bias already in place, turning the safety net into a spider’s web that lures you in with a little assistance, and then wraps you up in regulations so tight that you suffocate and die. All the while, watching over you with an unfeeling eye, preventing you from escape, or in the real world, keeping you dependant.

When it comes to the efficiency of these programs, we must also ask ourselves if government is really the best administrator. In my humble opinion, it is not. Government’s propensity to over spend, over evaluate, and under perform makes it the least likely candidate for the job. Government excels at collecting funds and assuring an even playing field through legislation. It is a capable collector of goods, but a lousy dispenser of service.

An alternative structure could be something like this: the federal government would be tasked with collecting a tax specifically earmarked for social programs that assist those in need. The feds could not take any money out; they could only put money in. They would also be responsible for crafting general guidelines for allocating these funds. Private organizations would bear the responsibility of developing local or regional assistance programs. These organizations would submit plans and funding requests to a rotating, national citizens committee who would be responsible for ensuring that the funds were being properly disbursed and equitable distributed. This citizen panel would also conduct audits on both the organizations that provide assistance and the people who were receiving the aid.

We must remember that assistance is just that- it is meant to be temporary help while an individual gets back on their feet. Towards those ends, programs must be developed that not only meet the urgent requirements of shelter and food, but also must be geared towards returning a person back to productive society. Provided that recipients are not disabled, there should be ways for them to contribute while they are getting back on their feet and there should be training programs to help them avoid returning to the same status as before. In other words, we offer help to those who demonstrate their willingness to help themselves, so long as they are able to.

I haven’t addressed all of the root causes of poverty or hunger or homelessness, focusing here mainly on the structure of the aid itself. And it would be ridiculous to imagine that simply reforming our safety net could solve all these problems. Larger issues like costs and wages, improved education, employment practices, and healthcare are all contributing factors to these issues. But until we make the necessary adjustments to those aspects of our so
ciety, we will continue to deal with hungry children, homeless grandfathers, and poor families. And there is no reason that those in need should be subjected to the cruelty of government red tape. The least we can do is expect our safety net to be solid, efficient, effective, and to treat our citizens with dignity.

When we pay for something tangible, we own that thing and may use it, for the most part, as we see fit. This rule applies to our cars, our houses, our clothes, and on and on. If we want to paint all the windows in the house black, we can because we own it. Likewise, if we pay for a service, we expect to get our money’s worth. If we pay someone to paint the windows black for us, we don’t want to see any bits of light shining through at the end of the job. We have ownership of that service at that time and want things done our way. After all, we’re paying the bill. And when we get a product that we can’t adapt to our needs, or when we receive service that is less than we expected, we make our displeasure known through switching services or brands. But how do these ideas apply to public services like education? After all, we are the ones paying for education through our tax dollars, yet we seem to have little ability to control the use of those dollars to ensure that we are indeed getting what we are paying for. Further, if we are able to discern that our money is being ill-spent, we are hard pressed to fix the problem because of the disconnect between an entrenched educational bureaucracy and the common tax paying adult.

Our current system of funding and control seem to have the appearance of rationality and accountability on the surface, but if you crack open the lid on this jar of worms, you’ll find nothing but mismanagement, wasteful resource allocation, and an overall lack of common sense. The state and federal governments allocate a portion of their general or property tax revenues for general education funds, disbursed to pay for all the facility, instructional, administrative, and operational costs and apportioned by various formulas and guidelines. In the 2001-2002 school year, the national expenditures were $434,438,650,000 (yes, that is BILLIONS) or about $6500 per pupil per year. As of the last population census, legal residents of school age (5-18 years old) numbered about 55 million. (I know that the math for these numbers doesn’t exactly add up- 6500 x 55m does not equal 434b- but what can I say…government tables!) So what are we getting for our money?

Students are provided with textbooks, at an average cost of $50, maybe 5 per student. (Many of which are outdated or shared by multiple students at one time, preventing these books from being taken home for study.) Students are provided with teachers, whose average salary of $42,900 and average class size of 16 costs $2931 per student. (Many of who are becoming disillusioned with both students and administrators.) Students are provided with a facility in which to learn, that also requires administration and maintenance staff, supplies, and utilities. How much of the remaining $3569 is spent here? (The state of these facilities varies greatly though, due to their primary source of construction funding, local bond measures.) Students are sometimes provided with extra-curricular activities. (Often at an additional cost.) Apparently, more than half of the “cost per pupil” is being spent not on education, but on education infrastructure. Is this the return on our investment that we were expecting?

But really, $434 billion is a lot of money, and when we spend that much money, we expect to have some control of how it is being spent. If you thought the financial end was a bit jumbled, this gets really strange. To begin with, government falsely assumes that the money it collects in taxes belongs to it instead of the people. Taxes are not the property of government; rather government is entrusted with those funds to pay for the needs of society. This false assumption of ownership allows government to feel that it should have some control of the education process, rather than just being a conduit of shared resources. At the same time, we have demanded that government legislate laws ensuring a level playing field in society, so we have invited the government to the table insofar as school regulation is concerned. The people, however, recognize the fact that the tax money that pays for education is really theirs, and as such develop school districts and elect local citizen school boards to maintain their bit of control on the process. Yet those elections are not widely attended and the parents often remain unattached to these elected boards and their policies. What often results is an adversarial coupling when government makes mandates for education that the people don’t agree with. It would seem that we need to redefine the roles each should play in the educational process.

Where funding is concerned, we must come to recognize that simply throwing more money at school administrators and teacher’s unions is not going to change the state of our children’s education. The things that matter are the books and the tools and the instruction they receive. The formulas should be reworked so that teachers are at the top of the pay scale instead of the administrators and consultants. In fact, why couldn’t we turn over the administration aspects of schools to volunteer citizens who could manage these affairs on a part-time basis? The savings could be funneled back into classroom materials. Facilities would come next in line to assure that they are safe and clean, and consistent across the nation, offering all children the same opportunities according to their abilities. Streamlining our building efforts could save untold millions in construction and maintenance costs as well as alleviate uneven property taxes and unnecessary building bonds. Again, these savings could be used to support extra-curricular activities that are being cut all over the country. Absorption of school utility costs through minimal across the board ratepayer increases could further free up operating funds that could improve student-learning programs.

When it comes to providing an adequate learning environment, we must adopt those attitudes I discussed in the previous two essays: the necessity of parents to instill the traits of responsibility and respect in their children and for parents and teachers to work together to demand those qualities of their students, and the necessity of society to restructure its agenda to allow parents and children more time together so these traits can be taught through example. In order to further these goals, we should return more disciplinary control to our teachers and severely restrict the ability to sue schools or teachers for anything but the most egregious behavior. Our schools are inundated by lawsuit happy parents for slighting students or hampering their spirit or whatever other nonsense they can think of. The costs of defending or settling these kinds of lawsuits, and the insurance schools now need to pay for just strips away more of the dollars for real education. Students need to be clear on the fact that their job is to learn and their rights are dependant on their level of responsibility. Once we take away the “get rich quick” option, schools can go back to teaching and stop looking over their shoulders as they make a lesson plan.

Control of academic curriculum is usually what most parents are concerned about. We want to make sure that our kids are learning the basics of reading and writing and mathematics. We want to make sure that our teachers aren’t filling our kids heads full of false information, though at times, even this is subjective. But the government wants to impress an environment that is as equitable to all as possible, while expecting a minimum standard of achievement on certain general areas of knowledge. A solution could be as simple as delineating who gets to be responsible for what. Government, by nature, is best at providing a level playing field. Moving much beyond this simple task, at least in the area of education, is only asking for trouble. So governments role in schools should be limited to a few things: assuring the equitable redistribution of collected tax dollars for education; assuring equitable facilities for all student
s through oversight committees; providing basic standard criteria for teacher certification; and developing minimum required mastery levels for reading, writing, mathematics, civic responsibility, personal finance, history, and science. Local school boards would then be responsible for implementing academic courses of study that would serve their student populations and teach at least the minimum requirements according to that communities specific needs or methods; hiring and firing of all school personnel; procuring and distributing educational materials; and managing the day to day occurrences that arise. Each would abide the decisions of the other, but disputes would err towards to people in cases of curriculum and style or towards the government in cases of fairness or assessment.

Business could and should be encouraged to step up to the plate too, since they are big beneficiaries of an educated citizenry as well. They could be instrumental in developing instructional courses for areas that fall outside of the required minimum mastery levels. Specialized instruction in career specific areas could engender the right numbers of future workers for industries. An example would be similar businesses pooling their resources to form teaching guilds. The sports and entertainment industries could return some of their mega profits to society by funding community sports programs and arts education.

As with every new change, you can choose to phase the new ideas in gradually or adopt them all at once. In the case of education, it becomes even trickier to decide, since if the changes are really beneficial, you want to reach all the kids as early as possible. In this case though, I think we just need to formulate the plan, and pick a date of adoption and begin to implement starting with the kids first entering school that year. As the system evolves, preexisting kids could be brought into the fold, under the “better late than never” concept. Finally, adults should be offered some re-education opportunities as they need them to fill any gaps in their education due to growing up in troubled educational times.

The bottom line is that there is already a good amount of money being spent but no real control beyond who can make headlines with the latest lawsuit. An educated society is a shared responsibility and a shared asset. It’s time that government and citizens quit fighting over education and turn towards our respective strengths to provide a more efficient, and therefore, more effective school system for our children.

In the world of racing, you will never see a race between a Ferrari, a Volkswagon van, and a bicycle. The reason you will never see this is because the three vehicles are in completely different classes with regards to maneuverability, performance, and power. But if for some reason such a race were to take place, it’s pretty easy to determine the outcome. Barring unusual circumstances, the Ferrari would come in first, by a long shot, while the Volkswagon would come in second some time later. Eventually, the bicycle would cross the finish line too, but by then most of the spectators would have already gone home. There are no surprises with this outcome either, as most sensible people would not expect the van to perform as well as the Ferrari or the bicycle to perform as well as the van. This is an example of Common Sense at work.

The analogy of the race exposes the reality of our educational system today. One size fits all education ignores the realities that everyone has a different capacity and desire to learn. For some students, learning is both easy and fun. For others, learning is hard and unpleasant. And for the many in between, learning is neither easy nor hard, nor fun or unpleasant…it just is. But our school systems lump all students together, categorized primarily by age, and teaches them together as if they were all the same. Sure, we have some accelerated classes for the brighter students and remedial classes for the slower kids, but on the whole, the schools attempt to teach and promote kids in age groups with gained knowledge being secondary as criteria for advancement. The result is a student who either lacks the necessary skills to continue learning or one who is hopelessly bored by the relatively slow pace of learning. Yet the overriding concern to build a students self-esteem by pretending that all are equal in every way, which trumps the process of education.

Much of the problem lies with the false notion that kids who are the same age should learn at the same rate. But since all children are different, this is a generalization that is weak at best. We must also refocus our sights on the type of education that our students receive and have a clear-cut objective regarding the knowledge they are expected to obtain at certain points along their educational careers. By addressing these basic building blocks of education, we can begin to put our children back on the path towards an education that is appropriate to their abilities and desires, and in the process, we could probably more effectively use our education tax dollars.

With regards to the grade based system of classifying students, while from a social perspective this idea makes a lot of sense, from an intellectual viewpoint, we may be hurting kids more than we are helping them. At some point in their education, kids will begin to separate themselves according to their academic ability, creating amongst themselves a caste system of sorts that serves to segregate the students from each other. Those who are academically gifted may be shut out of the mainstream social activities, while those who fall below the academic norm may lose all interest in further education. Meanwhile, those in the larger middle go blissfully along, hardly being challenged to exercise their intellect or being pigeon-holed into pre-determined academic plans derived by parents and counselors who are determined to push students along the “college path” regardless of that students desire or aptitude. Rather than help our students master certain necessary areas of knowledge, we instead funnel them through to the next grade, hoping that they will catch up and flushing out their lives with abundant extra-curricular activities to make them appear better rounded as college prospects.

But the numbers of high-school dropouts, the low level of adult literacy comprehension and mathematic skill, the masses of remedial college courses necessary for students to get up to speed, all affirm the failures of our current structure. We need to find another way to categorize, instruct, evaluate and advance students so that they can all achieve the level of education they are capable of achieving. So where do we start?

Beginning at the earliest ages, from pre-school through the second grade, basic evaluations should be taken on each student as they begin to learn how to read, write, recognize shapes and colors, and perform simple mathematical calculations. Based on a students progress, beginning at grade three, students could then be separated according to their learning capabilities, offering students who are faster learners to move at a more accelerated pace while slow learners could be taught at a slower pace. By separating these groups from the students who are average achievers, we could remove the stigma and social cruelty that pits students against each other, giving all students an opportunity to focus on learning and not on jealous or insensitive peers. Such a move would also permit teachers to spend less time dealing with students who are disruptive due to boredom and less time helping individuals who were seriously behind the other students and more time teaching at a common speed that fits the capabilities of the class as a whole. All the while, students could shift from one learning path to another if their capabilities show that they have become more or less adept at learning. As students progress in their scholastic years, they would be periodically assessed to ascertain that they had mastered the skills necessary for a person with their capabilities and of their age group before they could move on to middle or high school.

Once in middle school, students could begin to explore the opportunities that await them as adults by engaging in more “real life” educational opportunities. (An interesting concept for instruction of these courses can be found in this post at Educational Whisperer.) Students would also begin to learn about civic responsibilities and ethics courses in middle school along with their academic lessons in math, literature, science, history, and art. At the end of their eighth year of schooling, students would be assessed again and interviewed to determine the course of their further education. Some students will not have the skills or desire to pursue a career that required a college education and could be steered into a course of education designed to teach trade skills necessary for life in the working world after high school. Other students would continue along the college path and go on to become scientists or doctors or teachers, among other things. In both cases, high school education would become more individually tailored to each students goals, while still imparting the necessary life skills like personal health and finance, and basic “living on your own” information. From high school, students would follow their paths to a university, a specialized trade school, or directly into the work force.

Finally, we must recognize that all students do not learn in the same way. Some are good at learning through the written word while others are good at learning through tactile experience. As such, schools should try to be more flexible with regards to the methods a student uses to gain his or her new knowledge. The goal is to learn, so the rigidity of how something is learned should be dissolved and the focus should become that it was learned at all. Teachers and parents should help their students develop learning methods that work for best for them and be judged on the final outcome.

Most children want to please their parents, and by extension, the other adults in their lives. As young children, this desire allows us to instill the qualities of respect and responsibility in them. But we must at some point return that respect when they become capable of choosing their own interests in life. By nurturing these abilities and desires, we help create a happier, more pro
ductive adult member of society. We must stop pretending that all children are the same, or that they can all learn the same skills. That simply is untrue and only blinds us to the real goal of giving our children the kind of education that they deserve.

Every event in a young persons life is a teaching moment, whether we recognize it as such or not. Every first sound, every new sight, every new sensation is an opportunity to learn, especially in the first few years of our lives. And as people grow they continue to learn new things and ideas and ways to behave. They don’t learn these things in a vacuum though. They learn from the people around them and the people they see in the world. Whether or not you have a child of your own, you are a teacher to someone; we all are.

In order for the state of our educational system to be repaired and once again become an institution of learning and advancement instead of a money sucking day care center, American society needs to face up to our shared responsibility as teachers of the young. A quick reminder of where we went astray may be in order. American financial might in the 20th century provided an era of leisure and consumption previously unknown. As incomes rose and technology advanced, people began to buy more things to do their work and increase their leisure time, in the process, losing the lessons gained from physical labor. As their leisure time increased, technology created entertainment that required less and less intellectual involvement and more introspective enjoyment, causing social skills and interaction to suffer. These qualities of physical work, intellectual development, and social mores combined to develop what was once known as character and often blossomed into traits like respect, appreciation, imagination, empathy, congeniality, and compassion. These traits, once learned, would, in most cases, transcend into all aspects of social and personal life and help continue our national prosperity. But if life got better, people got worse.

Don’t get me wrong here. Technological advancements are a wonderful thing. But they do not take the place of humanity and the ability to coalesce with a community. Technology offers humanity the opportunity to expand our knowledge about our world and each other by giving us more time to explore new lands and ideas. It does this by making the machinations of daily life more efficient, freeing up more time for people to enjoy. But rather than use this opportunity to our advantage, we have allowed ourselves to become slave to it. Instead of turning the increased productivity into an asset for a better quality of life, we have insisted that our own productivity increase to match that of our machines. The result, of course, is a net result in no more, and in some cases less, leisure time than we had before. Less time for our families. Less time in our communities. Less time to teach our children those things that create character.

But the children have been watching and learning anyway. They have learned that work is more important than family. They have learned that imagination is just a click away. They have learned that money makes the world go ‘round. And they have learned that “me” is the most important person in the world. Parents, too tired from a long days work or home late after a long commute, would rather spend the few hours with their children filling them with fun and adoration, instead of teaching them about respect and responsibility. Or they would rather pamper themselves, ignoring the kids altogether as they run wild through the house. Kids have learned that it is easier to do what you want than what is expected, as the punishment is likely to be minor or non-existent, and rarely ever consistent. The result is a generation that expects to have what they want, when they want it, and the way the want to have it. We are now moving into the third consecutive generation that has been raised under these increasingly slacking conditions and the result is a society that shows little respect and gets little respect from anyone outside a given age group, and one that can barely communicate with each other, let alone the rest of the adult world. Such a societal shift isn’t always easy to see until it’s gone on for some time, and this is no exception really. All generations complain about “those darn kids today…” but the truth is that it’s becoming less of a generic grumble and more of a reality.

So what does any of this have to do with the school system anyhow? After all, isn’t this an essay about education? The answer is like connecting the dots in a child’s coloring book. In order for a child to be taught the basic intellectual skills to function in the modern world, they first have to have the character traits instilled in them that will allow them to function in a formal learning environment. In order for these traits to be instilled, parents have to take a more active roll in helping their child develop them. In order for parents to spend more time with their kids, we need to accept the fact that our priorities, as a society, need to shift.

Such a dynamic change of thought requires some proof of pay-off, so let’s take a look at the benefits of having an educated public. First off, business needs skilled labor to operate. In fact, so many businesses are claiming a lack of educated Americans to fill their jobs as an excuse for outsourcing their work offshore or encouraging illegal immigration. Quality education would negate that excuse. A more educated public would also likely have a higher rate of employment, which would ease tax burdens on social welfare programs and increase personal wealth across the board. An educated public is less likely to have rampant crime or rundown communities. And an educated public would probably be more stable and peaceful, working together to solve the next human challenge instead of fighting for a piece of the pie. To me, these seem like very valuable returns for my investment in time and money.

So, we must stop paying lip service to the empty mantra of “Education Comes First” unless we intend to back it up with actions. Parents must be responsible for nurturing the traits necessary for a child to succeed in formal education, especially respect and responsibility. Parents and teachers must work together to demand respect and responsibility be applied to the learning process by backing each other up instead of working against each other as if the child’s happiness were the prize in a race. Business must become more flexible for families by allowing the pace of commerce to relax a bit, or adjusting their business plans to help accommodate the time families need to make their children into good adults. And society must promote personal interaction and development as more valuable than pure wealth attainment. Young people must be taught that their role in society is to learn the traits and skills that will allow them to become productive adults instead of having their whims indulged at every turn. Educators must choose to put their student’s needs ahead of their own by dispensing knowledge without bias or omission. And we must show our children that we value education by offering them safe, clean buildings, accurate and complete information, and qualified teachers and accountable administration officials.

If you teach a child to throw rocks at windows, you can’t very well be angry with him when you come home and all of your windows are broken out. He is just using the knowledge he learned in the way he was taught. In the same vein, if we allow our children to sit in front of a television or video game for hours at a time, if we allow them to ignore their teachers or disrespect us as parents, if we give them everything they ask for and expect nothing in return, we can’t blame them for becoming uneducated, disrespectful, anti-social adults.

It will do us no good to reform the way we spend our education dollars, or to restructure our teaching methods, or mandate specific mastery of specific skills, or make any other superficial changes to the system without repairing the foundation that we send our children off to school on. Without an educated society we will eventually become one of two things: either a society of ignorant peasants working for the man or a culture of autonomy, too locked into the solitary, technological grid to relate to others or contribute much to anyone. Of course, behind door number three is the promise of an educated society. Which door will you choose?

It is not a misstatement to say that education is the equalizer of humanity. If you teach a person the skills to master modern civilization, they stand a much better chance of becoming a contributing, responsible member of the species. All parents wish that their children might someday have a “better” life than they had, whatever their definition of better may be, and most embrace education as the vehicle to reach that goal. Our motivations for educating our youth are both self-serving and altruistic. We want an educated society because it is necessary for a productive, peaceful society, and we want our children to become educated, for their own improvement and for our own fulfillment. Whether you accept one view, the other, or both, the implication is clear: a society that does not educate its youth is destined to stagnancy while a society that values education will thrive and prosper. Obviously, America, along with most other nations of the world, places importance on the value of education for both reasons. At least, that’s what we claim.

But even as we proclaim unwavering support for the goal of education, our practical application of that goal is a mockery of itself. Many of our schools are overcrowded and dilapidating. Teachers unions resist change in curriculum or organization. Special interest groups demand services that degrade the entire systems ability to serve all students equally. State and federal regulations impose mandated achievement levels that measure little in the way of actual achievement. Parents are often apathetical and uninvolved in their children’s educational development. More money is thrown into school budgets that get eaten up by studies that show that graduation rates are increasing while class options are diminishing and extra-curricular programs disappear. The list of hypocrisies goes on and on, but the bottom line is this: when it comes to education, we are speaking out of both sides of our mouths.

At the heart of the issue is the importance we do or do not place on educating our children. If, as I assume, we truly believe that education is an important key to prosperity and peaceful existence, it is time we seriously revamp our education system. Everything from the schoolhouses to the curriculum to the administration must be given a fresh look. Everything…including our expectations and our definitions for what makes a successful education. We must put aside all of the politically correct nonsense to establish a truly efficient and effective educational program that would serve all the citizens of this country.

While everyone can be educated, everyone cannot be educated equally. Accepting this fact is essential to any meaningful education reform. What this means is simply that all people are not equal with regards to mental capacity, intelligence, or practical ability. While some individuals can easily master the concepts of higher mathematics and science, others may excel at artistic endeavors or mechanical tasks. Some will learn quickly while others may not be capable of learning much beyond basic personal skills. Yet in our current climate of promoting self-esteem above actual achievement, we have allowed our schools to neglect this important fact of education. This attitude must be changed if we are ever going to progress beyond what is aptly described as either a babysitting service or a diploma mill. Yes, it’s important for people to have a good self-image, but derailing the entire education system to achieve those means is shortsighted behavior. Self-image should come from values instilled at home and not be tied to ones ability to conquer chemistry or read Latin. Because education serves in part to prepare children for the inevitable day when they will become working, participating adults, more attention should be given to the fact that all jobs are valuable, with the benefit to a smooth society coming from the combined efforts of all.

In this light, equal education is not the goal, but rather equal access to education is what should be strived for. It would be far more efficient and successful to structure our education in such a way that individuals would at some point along the line be pointed in a direction most suited to their natural abilities than to maintain the charade of mental equality. During the early years of public education, students should be measured against their peers to determine what level of performance they might achieve. Once this has been achieved, students of similar learning abilities could be taught together according to their abilities. Success should be measured on the achievement of each student and their ability to master the skills of life and education to their full potential.

Still, even though all can’t achieve an equal level of knowledge through education, we must still strive to impart certain minimum knowledge levels for all students to master. These skills would necessarily include basic reading, writing, and math skills. Practical living skills like personal finance, personal communications, and personal responsibility should also be taught. And so should civic responsibility. These are the basic skills an adult must have for a chance at success in the modern world and should not be ignored in education. A general comprehension of U.S. and world history, a basic knowledge of scientific principals, and an appreciation of art could all be important for a more rounded education, and should be taught as well.

Because education is a public endeavor, it is only fitting that the costs of education be borne by us all. But simply paying the tax collector is not enough. It is our responsibility as citizens to ensure that the taxes collected are used to educate our children and not used to pad the pockets of administrators, consultants, builders, or political committees. The state of our public school buildings is enough to make one wonder where all the dollars are going, because it sure isn’t into maintenance. This too is a problem. While it is true that a willing person can learn as easily in a sandpit as in a lecture hall, the importance we place on education is apparent in the importance we place on our educational building, and the subliminal effects of rundown or overcrowded schools only tells our children that we are less interested in their education than we are in saving a buck. Such messages only serve to diminish the value of education among our youth so we must make a conscious decision to place a priority on safe, well-maintained schools. It is a curious society that spends more money creating lavish prison complexes than it does on schoolhouses.

As a society, we must recognize the need to reform our education system. As parents, we must recognize the need to reform our own ideas about public school. One of the biggest problems in our educational system is the growing distance of thought between teachers and administrators and parents. No longer are teachers looked up to as role models for our children. Instead, parents vilify a teacher who demands accountability from their students as being too hard or too opinionated. On the other hand, teachers view parents as little more than disinterested chauffeurs dropping the kids off for another day of babysitting and socializing. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle and their needs to be some common ground on which to meet. How about this? The task for teachers and parents is to craft an educational plan that meets all the capabilities of the student while defining the responsibilities that are expected of the student, the parent, and the teacher. Children may be like sponges when it comes to obtaining information, but they can also be like sponges in another way. If they are allowed to, they will lie around and do little or nothing to improve themselves, especially if someone comes along to wring them out once in a while. Parents and teachers must come together and form a united front in order for children to excel and master the skills that are expected of them.
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In order for our educational efforts to rise beyond the level of today, into a system where costs expended produce a qualified workforce and responsible citizenry, we must rededicate ourselves to the fundamental idea that of all the social services, the ability to provide an equitable education is among the most valuable in terms of sustaining society. We must refuse to continue the ways of power politics and instead focus on the real goal of teaching our children.

I’ve spent the last few days looking through my tattered, pocket-sized Constitution, searching high and low for the portions within that authorize or regulate our government’s implementation of various social programs that now are ubiquitous in America. I thought for sure that somewhere in the Constitution I would find something about education funding or medical care. The closest I could get was Article 1, Section 8.1 which states that “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.” Even this reference only specifically addresses defensive spending with the other use of moneys collected being for the “general welfare” without defining what that actually is. From this, I can only conclude that (a) government is obliged to spend money collected (taxes et. al.) on general welfare; (b) general welfare is undefined and as such open to periodic interpretation; (c) the people decide what represents general welfare at any given time, and assert that decision through voting; (d) as such, the people have the power to direct both the spending and the form said welfare should take.

Defining general welfare is at the heart of the matter. General welfare encompasses the obvious things like roads and parks and public buildings. General welfare covers the formation and administration of laws and justice and legislation. But general welfare goes beyond these tangible items that government is obliged to provide based upon our own insistence that it do so. Government, as defined in our own Declaration of Independence, is formed by men to secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it is in these areas that my focus on general welfare will now be directed. For it is also in the general welfare to have a citizenry that is healthy, educated, and free from poverty. It is in the general welfare to provide services that ensure that a basic level of life is sustainable for all people. Over the last century, American politicians and citizens alike have made efforts to provide these “quality of life” services, and with varying levels of success. We have enacted programs to educate our young, feed our hungry, heal our sick, and shelter our poor. But instead of eradicating the number of citizens who need help, or even reducing their number, our social programs are a shambles, costing billions of dollars annually with little to show for their effort. It is an over regulated, often over lapping effort as well.

Take a look at the public institution of education. Education is a basic necessity for any civilization to advance and improve its quality of life. Many nations, ours included, recognize the importance of educating the youth and have empowered government to collect taxes to pay for a base level of public education. The supposed goal of public education is to teach young people how to master basic skills that they will need to operate as productive adult members of society. Additionally, public education is supposed to ensure that all students are exposed to science, history, and arts, as well as teaching social skills among ones peers. In America, study after study appears to show that our educational system is failing across the board. But putting all those studies aside, I am still constantly amazed at the lack of the depth of knowledge that is being taught in our schools, as evidenced in daily written communications or verbal conversations.

Or we could talk a bit about medical care and the correlation between a healthy society and the promotion of “general welfare.” Our professed belief in creating a level playing for all citizens has not yet reached the point of understanding that equitable health maintenance is critical to a prosperous society. We accept the necessity of public health care programs because we want that assurance for ourselves if we fall on hard times. But at the same time, we allow our government to use medical care as a game piece between various special interest groups without much regard for the real life consequences beyond which corporate donor gets paid back. Health care has become a complex web of corruption and indifference.

Retirement security is another member in the social program family of general welfare. One measure of a society is the manner in which they treat their elderly people. Government funded retirement security programs, like medical programs, are embraced by a public unsure of their own ability to provide for themselves in their old age, and are seeking some level of reassurance that they will not be left out in the cold. But our own social security programs, aside from being manipulated by our unworthy public servants, are entangled in a web of bureaucracy that only serves to make the days of seniors more aggravated and less relaxing.

Other socially funded programs include assistance with housing or food or childcare or programs for our military volunteers. Each of these efforts are borne out of a genuine desire by citizens to assist each other in hard times through the collections of taxes to pay for these services. But once the taxes get into the hands of the politicians, the special interest groups and corporate donors come knocking at the door, hands outstretched, trying to get the money without regard to the public desires or needs. The public, getting no relief from either political party, becomes embarrassed at first, angry in time, and apathetic at last at the seemingly endless line of corrupt politicians and business leaders.

It sometimes seems that government has some resentment at being placed at the center of social programs. Indeed, one could almost believe that the sheer inefficiency and lack of broad based successes were something of a master plan of incompetence in the hopes that the public would somehow withdraw their desire to provide social programs that ensure that everyone has the same chance out of the gate. If I wanted to get myself fired from a job, I would only need to adopt a work pattern like the government’s and I’d be out the door by lunchtime. In our desire to help each other, we have created a monster out of our government, a monster that is gobbling ever more tax dollars while placing ever more restrictions on what we can get back from our investment. Instead of operating in the best interest of the public it is tasked to serve, governments increasingly embark on missions that tinker with aspects of an already broken system instead of having the courage to point out the problems and work to get them fixed.

Entrenched ideological constructs have only enabled the morass to grow larger. Citizens have been deluded into thinking that the only reforms necessary come in the form of larger taxes, while politicians craft disingenuous policy that benefits corporations before the citizens. Breaking through that wall of complicity requires a strong dose of information and Common Sense. My next several essays will explore our public social programs of education, medicine, retirement, housing, and the others mentioned as well. I invite you to come along as I tell the truth about the state of affairs and offer some ideas for change that could really benefit society. It’s time for a fresh look at our methods. Our money, and more importantly our lives, are in the balance.

In the very old days, when people decided to venture away from their usual homelands, the journey to a new land was a long, dangerous, arduous trek. Today we can navigate the globe in a matter of hours. A few hundred years ago, a trip into town from the nearby countryside might take a day or more. Today we can get there in under an hour. Surely, one of the great achievements of modern humanity has been our mastery over distance. And it’s a good thing too. As our world becomes smaller through trade and communication, our ability to visit other lands increases. And as our cities haphazardly expand, our need for reliable transportation and infrastructure becomes vital. It is because transportation is so vital to our evolving world that we should take some time to think about the efficiency and the safety of our transportation infrastructure.

Transportation issues can be easily divided into two main groups: local travel and long distance travel. Both levels of transportation must be designed to service their specific needs while maintaining a balance between personal usefulness, cost efficiency, and appropriate ecological responsibility. Transportation infrastructure is a shared property and must thus be considered as such by both those who use it and those who care for it. Our attitudes towards transportation need to be readjusted to allow other thoughts to have a chance at success. Obviously, both our modes of transportation and the infrastructure to support them will continue to change over time, but by accepting this fact at the beginning, we can make projected accommodations to facilitate that change when it comes, reducing long term costs and minimizing the use of resources.

So really, the place to begin is with the way we view transportation. By some twist of fate, the evolution of transportation became intertwined with a part of the human psyche with the result being that to humans, mode of transportation is equal to social status, with the fastest traveler at the top of the chart. (This eventually spiraled out of control. Today we are all expected to move so fast and accomplish so much in a single day that our species seems to be evolving these abilities into our genetic code. But I digress…) As personal transportation progressed to the point where everyone could now go pretty fast, we rose to the challenge to continue our transportation castes through the creation of bigger or sleeker or tougher personal transportation, all the while our identities becoming one with our mode of transport until we almost view them as extensions of ourselves. We’ve managed to transform transportation from a convenience to a personal right. We’ve made getting from here to there and back again a personal statement instead of just letting it be what it is…getting around.

So let’s step back from the attitude of transportation and move into a more practical look at transportation. Which is the more important: how you get there, when you get there, or that you get there? Easily, the “how you get there” question is the least important, but it is the one we all place the most emphasis on. I say enough of that nonsense. Getting to our destination and getting there in a timely fashion are what matters. With that in mind, let’s step outside the box and take a glimpse of what transportation could be like, with a little help from new energy development and better city planning.

Local travel tends towards two goals: errand travel and employment travel. One kind is erratic, the other is fairly consistent. Some employment consists mostly of more travel. Personal vehicles do nearly all of this travel. In smaller towns, this may not seem to be a problem, and as energy becomes more advanced, even the pollutant effects of singular travel may be negated. But in large cities and their ever-growing suburbs, the problem of traffic congestion and pollution grows more staggering every year. How could we reduce, or even eliminate all those individual vehicles, yet still provide people the means to get to work and back, or to deliver the goods that their job requires? The answer lies in the two words capitalists hate to love: Public Transportation.

Fortunately, I’ve been on public buses, vans, taxis, trains, and the like, so I have a healthy contempt for most of our public transportation systems. The reason they exist in this state is because of our attitude towards transportation, which I mentioned that we need to work on. Public transportation is a good idea ruined by bureaucratic idiocy. And corporate greed. And public apathy. But what if we could develop a flexible, high speed, semi-private, public transportation system that would get you to within a half mile from your place of employment? (Think electromagnetic monorail with separate “cars” able to disconnect and reconnect at specified intersections and depots.) What if we developed a subterranean cargo delivery system that delivered all goods from a central location to a specified neighborhood for more local disbursal to shops? (Think pneumatic cargo tubes like those at a drive through bank, only bigger.) Couldn’t such systems greatly reduce pollution, reduce congestion, and even reduce massive road development? As for local errand travel, if development can be steered away from the car and be based more around the local areas, public transit could take many forms.

If local transportation suffers from inefficiency in use, long distance travel suffers from inefficient service and infrastructure. As our nation makes incredible advances in personal entertainment technology, we have done little or nothing to update our antiquated airports, harbors, and railways in the area of security or technology. And our public-private management practices are increasingly tilted in favor of the private entities. Our transportation tax dollars (read fuel taxes, airport or rail use taxes, or any other travel related excises, taxes, or fees), when they don’t get diverted into general funds our pet projects, are supposed to be used to maintain and improve our airports and roads and railways. We build these places with our hard earned money. Then we turn them over to private businesses that charge us to use our airports and rail lines. And in their efforts to increase profits, they cut services and amenities, stifle consumer regulation, and decry security measures as intrusive to their schedules. This is the worst kind of capitalism, and our airline conglomerates are among its most eager practitioners.

It is time for the public to reclaim what we built and paid for. It is time to insist that business become true partners with regards to public transportation, especially long distance transportation. We need to upgrade our technology and security measures while increasing passenger service and economy. We should expect those businesses that operate on public property to be responsible for returning some of their profit towards maintenance and improved service. If they balk, why not develop a national airline and a national rail service, funded by tax dollars, available to all citizens at a reasonable price that would cover costs of operation and maintenance but not produce a profit. After all, the ability to travel around one’s own country or to others should not be based on money. Travel increases knowledge. Travel increases tolerance. Travel is a necessity.

In the end, we may not even really have the option of ignoring public transportation much longer. As fossil fuel resources are increasingly consumed, and until we develop new forms of energy, our current modes of travel will become too expensive for many to operate on a daily basis. Further, international resource usage may change supplies available for personal transportation. And as public transportation increases, so too will the need for increased security measures to be established to ensure public safety. Why not begin to establish alternatives today, before we need to have them in place? Why wait until it’s too late? To do so
could negate the progress we’ve made over the last century and once again, distance could become a barrier.

As with any new ideas, initial suggestions are often subject to criticism based on financial costs, lack of technology, or murky management structures. So let me say this: Yes, the financial costs of overhauling our transportation infrastructure may be expensive, but the returned investment in efficiency, security, and maintenance will be realized in time. The cost of waiting until we’ve no other options could be even more expensive. Yes, we lack some of the technology we may someday have, but we can begin to prepare by reducing our subsidies to obsolete methods and encouraging new development through creative outreach like that used in the commercial space race. And yes, honest management will require honest stewards, but I believe they can be found among us, and that they will be found. We really should begin now.

Increasingly, we are becoming a world of human anthills. The modernization of our world, both in developed and developing countries, has resulted in the creation of the megalopolis, giant cities with millions of people crammed together in comparatively small spaces. It’s hard to say which part of this equation drives the other. Does the migration to the cities prompt modernization or does the modernization tempt the people to come? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? In either case, the two parts feed off of each other and the cities continue to grow, stretching the resources that provide infrastructure and covering the land with concrete. The result is a lifetime of waiting in long lines on the streets and in the shops, a landscape of infinite buildings, a disconnect with the natural world and with our fellow citizens through sensory deprivation in the former case and sensory overload in the latter. In our haste to be great, we have become bogged down by the massive pressure of millions of people all trying to do the same basic thing at the same time. Quality of life, the very thing that modernization promises to increase, becomes just another ideal that we dream about.

Our large city models have many positive attributes, to be sure. They offer diversity and variety in business and industry, and any number of recreational and educational opportunities. But they also bring traffic congestion and slums and blight. And yet each year, the largest cities in the country continue to grow as more and more people flock to them in search of prosperity. The suburbs become metropolises in their own right and like a cancer, the culture of concrete envelops the natural world until it is but a shadow of its former self. How is it that we have forgotten our connection with the natural world? As we build our buildings and pave our streets, we have no thought to either ourselves or to our environment.

The current standard of multiple residential suburbs around a greater metropolis doesn’t really fit the needs of a technological society that can network many jobs from multiple locations. While the populations increase, public services become more taxed upon and the quality is diminished as the costs go up. In many cases, these effects are already being felt as hospitals become overcrowded or schools become less effective or commutes to business sectors become unbearable. And don’t forget the increase in air and water pollution created by a larger population coupled with the deforestation of natural plants in favor of development. Or the inability to maintain existing roads, pipes, and public buildings, even as new ones are connected to the suburbs. Or the inadequate number of fire and police personnel to protect such large populations. The list could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is that this model for civilization is no longer conducive to a higher quality of life, nor is it necessarily economically or ecologically the wisest course to continue.

In addition to the aforementioned problems, our suburban model creates an environment of unnecessary competition between the suburban cities and the metropolis, and an overlapping of governmental regulation and enforcement within a region. Often, cities within this megalopolis structure find themselves at odds with each other, sometimes to the detriment of the region as a whole, and certainly to the detriment of the taxpayers.

So, if this model is no longer acceptable, what model is? Some regions of the country have created so called urban growth boundaries in an effort to constrain the spread of suburbia, but these efforts have only slowed the growth, not changed its pattern. But at least it is a step in the right direction. If there is one thing to be gained by our experiment with suburbia, it is the concept of master planning. While its present application gives us identical residential sections and look-alike strip malls, at least the concept has promise. Just because we are stuck in a rut with regards to creative land use doesn’t mean we have to stay there. City planning and land use measures should reflect an attitude of efficiency for both citizen and business, recognize the importance of coexisting with the natural world, and promote better regional planning.

The first place to start is by creating regional development zones. Each zone could have a maximum population limit to decrease the negative social effects of overcrowding and a maximum growth boundary to maintain a better grasp on infrastructure management. In this model, a central zone, or hub, could act as a central manufacturing, governmental, and public resource focal point, with services for the region being coordinated and disbursed from this general location. Surrounding the central hub could be an area of development for shopping centers, higher education facilities, entertainment centers and high-density, vertical residential units. Beyond this “nucleus” would be a mandatory “green space” separation of at least 5 miles but no more than about 20 miles, which would provide natural parkland spaces for outdoor recreation as well as ecological preservation and wildlife habitat. Beyond this “green zone” would be smaller sectors for residential living, schools, hospitals, and all the other small businesses that are necessary for daily life. Farther out, more “green space” would separate regional developments from each other, creating natural buffer zones between settlement areas.

High-speed, efficient commuter transportation would be established to transport people to and from the central zone for work while the outer sectors would be connected to each other with more conventional transportation structures. Separate regional developments could be connected by highway systems similar to those in place today as well as by rail operations. Such transportation techniques could help alleviate lengthy commutes and also diminish air pollution problems. The time and money saved by individuals and governments alike could contribute to better services and a more sustainable pace of life for everyone.

Of course, this kind of regional model would necessitate a change in attitude among our leaders both in business and in government. More jobs would need to be done by employees working from their homes through telecommuting. Regions could decide to specialize on certain industries in their central hubs, creating regional economies rather than the mega-economies of our current city structures. Each regional zone could become a piece of a larger economic puzzle, rather than the whole puzzle itself. But the upshot for individuals would be less time standing in lines and more time spent with each other. The upshot for our environment would be more concentrated development in smaller areas with less overall expansion and encroachment. And the upshot for our tax dollars would be a more focused plan for infrastructure and a lessening of duplicated services and irrational competition between neighbors of a region.

The thing to remember is that this is only one idea to address the problems with our urban model. It represents an effort to rethink the path of our future development with quality of life and efficiency being the primary forces driving development rather than simple profit. It requires a determination to coexist with our natural world while eliminating the stresses that overpower daily life in megalopolises. It requires a dedication to the development of new methods of transportation and infrastructure delivery. But as our cities continue to grow and become more impersonal and fatigued, it may be time to try something new.

This country has plenty of open space where new city models could be tried. Cooperation between government, business, and citizens could begin to establish these areas, drawing city dwellers to new opportunities and effectively allowing existing over-populated areas to thin out in time. By adopting a long
view towards development, we can increase the quality of life for ourselves today and for future generations to come, and also begin to reverse some of the damage we’ve done to the natural world.