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A few generations of really focused, quality education would help a lot more. Until then, I'm afraid it's a bit of a mess.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
How would education bring back jobs to rural America?
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Education would make some of these people employable in the first place, and in jobs which a handful of robot arms can’t do better.
- kuro-kuris 9y ago
  Making an educated guess: better education with regards to job opportunities requirements allows you to compete in a smaller market so your work won't be offshored.
- Clubber 9y ago
  It won't. You will just have educated people that now have to move away to get jobs. It's a simple easy answer until you think about step #2, getting a job in rural America.
megaman22 9y ago
It'll be a bit of a mess in any case. In a lot of rural school districts, you've got better than half of the students on free-and-reduced lunches, and often upwards of a quarter or a third of the students on IEPs. I grew up in such a place, my mother still teaches in that district. You really need to fix the basic underlying economic issues, so that you don't have kids coming to school hungry, and you don't have the best and brightest of the community fleeing so they can find work.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Absolutely! Frankly I'd argue that feeding your students should be a universal no-brainer anyway, especially when they can't afford it themselves. We know too damned much about the link between ability to learn and retain information, and a good nutritional intake to pretend that schools can ignore it to shave $$'s. The problem is that public education is public and so it runs into various forms of ideological resistance on that basis. Worse, the power of local districts to shape educational policy leads to predictable deficits, often also driven by ideology/politics. We have the money, we just choose to spend it on healthcare inflation, and weapons to sell. We don't see an immediate profit in education, so it's sidelined or privatized. We are shortsighted idiots, as a species.
- tomjen3 9y ago
  Maybe this is just me, but fixing the underlying economic issues sound _hard_. Feeding kids breakfast sounds doable.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago

How would education bring back jobs to rural America?

QAPereo 9y ago
Education would make some of these people employable in the first place, and in jobs which a handful of robot arms can’t do better.
kuro-kuris 9y ago
Making an educated guess: better education with regards to job opportunities requirements allows you to compete in a smaller market so your work won't be offshored.
Clubber 9y ago
It won't. You will just have educated people that now have to move away to get jobs. It's a simple easy answer until you think about step #2, getting a job in rural America.

megaman22 9y ago

It'll be a bit of a mess in any case. In a lot of rural school districts, you've got better than half of the students on free-and-reduced lunches, and often upwards of a quarter or a third of the students on IEPs. I grew up in such a place, my mother still teaches in that district. You really need to fix the basic underlying economic issues, so that you don't have kids coming to school hungry, and you don't have the best and brightest of the community fleeing so they can find work.

QAPereo 9y ago
Absolutely! Frankly I'd argue that feeding your students should be a universal no-brainer anyway, especially when they can't afford it themselves. We know too damned much about the link between ability to learn and retain information, and a good nutritional intake to pretend that schools can ignore it to shave $$'s. The problem is that public education is public and so it runs into various forms of ideological resistance on that basis. Worse, the power of local districts to shape educational policy leads to predictable deficits, often also driven by ideology/politics. We have the money, we just choose to spend it on healthcare inflation, and weapons to sell. We don't see an immediate profit in education, so it's sidelined or privatized. We are shortsighted idiots, as a species.
tomjen3 9y ago
Maybe this is just me, but fixing the underlying economic issues sound _hard_. Feeding kids breakfast sounds doable.