Silver State Libertarian Leanings

I’m not the type of person that spends a lot of time watching tv. In fact, I don’t even have cable, which places me somewhere in the stone age. One of the few shows I really like is “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?”. Besides the entertainment value, I think it says something about our education system. I’ll explain what I mean a little later.

Yesterday, I saw Dina Titus is supporting this bill. Senator Titus and I don’t agree on much, but the theory behind this bill we agree on. The solution is where we disagree.

The bill she is proposing would put stop what is referred to as universal default clauses. The meat and potatoes of this clause gives the credit card company the right to raise your rates if you go deliquent on any bill, not just theirs. These things are pretty evil. My answer to this problem is education, not legislation. A government that protects you from yourself is a scary thing because that government gets to decide what you need to be protected from, whether you like it or not. Can you say Big Brother?

So this brings me back to “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?”. One of the questions that sticks out in my memory asked something like “what is the largest species of bear?”.  I may not be word for word on what the question was, but the point is, most or all of the fifth graders knew the answer, the adult contestant did not. The adult really had no good reason to know the answer, as he or she has probably never used that piece of knowledge after the fifth grade.

Now, I don’t claim to have all the answers to our education problems, but that’s where the “duh factor” comes in. What percentage of our adult population will ever need to know the largest species of bear? I don’t know exactly, but it’s probably a single digit number. Certain scientiest and such, but not most people. What percentage of our adult population will at some point need to understand how a credit card works? Nearly 100%. Almost every single person will, at some point after their 18th birthday, get one of those advertisements in the mail for a credit card. But yet we teach kids about bears, and not about credit cards. That’s a major “duh” in my book. If everyone needs to know something, it seems like a no brainer that we should teach it to them in school.

Another great question was “on which planet would you weigh the most?” Again, all or nearly all of the kids knew the answer. The adult answered correctly, but she admited to guessing. The vast majority of the population will never use that little nugget of knowledge again. They will, hopefully, need to understand how their mortgage works, but most schools don’t teach that. Again, this should be a no brainer. You have two options for today’s lesson plan. Something most people will never use again, or something that will impact the majority of adults. Which one should we be teaching? Duh.

Again, I don’t have all the solutions to our education problems, but it seems to me this country would be in much better financial shape if we spent just a few hours a semester teaching our kids the tools they will most definately use as adults. It’s all about prioritizing, and it seems to me we collectively have our priorities out of whack.