Another reason for the recession

Can we fix this thing or what?
If education = money, then no education = no money. At least that's what this article suggests.

The achievement gap controversy has been around for a good long time. Gaps between girls and boys, whites and Blacks, the US vs. other nations of similar industrial development, and so on. The categories are endless. This article looks only at the US and other nations, I believe. And that if the US had closed the achievement gap from fifteen years ago, it would have a GDP at least $700 billion more than it does now. That's an entire bailout worth of dough.

Quoting the article:

"It's the equivalent to a permanent national recession," McKinsey's Bryan Hancock says. "We waste 3 to 5 billion dollars a day by not closing these achievement gaps. This is not simply an issue about poor kids in poor schools; it's about most kids in most schools."

Now I, like always, tend to see much more into it than how some reporters or policy makers or educators see it. Yes, statistics show the higher the degree you have, the higher your overall income tends to be. This is true, despite all the Gates and Spielbergs and other famously rich people who dropped out of college.

However, there are other factors as well. Students who perform better in academics tend to have higher self-esteem. Which means they tend to take more risks, accept more responsibilities, assert their ideas and follow through on them believing they are right for the situation. Which also means they perform better at their jobs, whatever that job may be. Which attributes to the GDP.

Students who perform below standards tend to have lower self-esteem, so they take fewer risks, and so on. Until they hit the "find a job" stage in life and end up making less income. This mentality is often passed on to the off spring. They don't call it the "cycle of poverty" for nothing.

Nearly all students I know want something like Hannah Montana's life - normal people with a secret, fabulous life and means to live it mysteriously appearing with almost no struggle whatsoever. They may SAY they want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a business executive, but what they REALLY mean is that they want to be a business executive-by-day-rock-star-by-night. How realistic is that? The lure of escapism happens early folks. And when their fantastical dreams don't happen, they get all jaded and depressed and that self-esteem plummets like a rock. I've been there.

Here's another teacher's opinion on the same article that might be enlightening.

My question is: if people had known this for so long, how come the nation keeps sinking money into "other things" rather than investing in education and quality educators? And not just with money. I'm talking about the intrinsic value of education, outside of dollars and cents. Pop culture today proves that you don't need a high school diploma to be rich and famous. You also don't need a high school diploma to tumble out of a limousine, drunk and without your underwear. However, you wouldn't know it for the millions of dollars tabloids pay for that kind of documentation.

Hedgetoad touched on it a little bit. If our society held education in a higher place than in does now, would we have the issues eminent today? I highly doubt it.