[Vision2020] Why I'm going to vote Yes on the Levy

[Paul Rumelhart]

Just a few reasons:

I can't underestimate the value of education in our community.  Forget 
evolution vs. intelligent design, think basic math skills, a sense of 
history, simple reading skills, a knowledge of the language we speak, 
and a basic understanding of science.  Where would we be today if we 
didn't value education?  Do you like that computer you're reading this 
with?  Are you happy to know that the hospital is just down the street 
if you have some kind of medical problem?  Would you rather drive to the 
ocean, or walk?  The more data we have to live life, the better it will 
become.  The more we all know, the better off we all are.  This 
prosperity results in real-world economic development.  This makes us 
richer as a community.  Our poorest people are richer than much of the 
rest of the world.

So, education is important.  But why not educate everyone individually?  
Why centralize it?

Well, first you have economies of scale.  There is more to learning than 
just sitting around the teacher on the floor in a semi-circle, listening 
to him or her reading you stories.  You need books and supplies.  You 
need places to work, and you need prepared lessons.  Centralizing all 
this makes sense.  Why expect every family to buy a microscope?  Or a 
bunsen burner?  Or a wall map of the US?  Why dump a substantial amount 
of money individually when we can spend less by centralizing it?

You also have the benefits of specialization.  We teach our teachers 
about one particular subject until they become experts on it.  Why ask 
everyone to learn everything about all subjects?  We also teach our 
teachers how to teach.  It's not simple, and just faking your way 
through it is not recommended.  Why expect all of us to learn this?  
Granted, it's probably very useful, but we have a limited amount of time 
and a limited number of neurons.  Learning all this takes time, and the 
ones who have learned it the best cost money.  Yet we need them desperately.

Public education is the great equalizer.  People who can't afford to 
teach their children, whether it's because of finances or time 
commitments or lack of knowledge in some areas, will still be able to 
give them an education.  Every child, no matter their background, has 
the opportunity to excel in their learning.  Who will become the next 
great physicist, or mathematician, or musician?  It's also a great 
springboard.  Who will be in the right place with the right set of facts 
and the knowledge to make use of them and do the next great thing?  
That's why I want to live forever.  So I can see what people keep coming 
up with as the world progresses.

Another reason for centralization is the changing nature of the world we 
live in.  All of us spend much of our lifetime unlearning things we 
learned as children.  Some of it was simply our misunderstandings as we 
developed and are simply later correcting.  Other facts, though, have 
simply been shown to be wrong.  Look how much physics has changed in the 
last 50 years.  Subjects like history change as we realize more about 
our past.  Geography changes as world events progress.  Even with 
relatively slowly changing fields, such as mathematics, new ways of 
imparting knowledge to others in these areas are found.  Teaching 
incorrect knowledge is probably worse than not teaching that knowledge 
at all.  This corrected knowledge needs to be assimilated, and it's 
inefficient to have to teach every homemaker just to have them teach 
their kids the next day.  It's more efficient to have those specialists 
I mentioned previously get updated on their subjects.  It's faster, 
because they are subject experts, and there are fewer of them to teach.  
It's also easier to require that they get updated on their subjects. 

So why support this levy, specifically?  Because, in my humblest of 
opinions, every penny we can afford to throw at it we will see back 
again a hundred-fold in the future as a community.  I'm sure there's a 
line out there past which any increases will not help.  I think we are 
so far away from the breakpoint that it's silly to talk about it.  Also, 
the appropriateness of this levy has been put into question.  Show our 
community that we know how important education is by voting Yes on this.

Paul