The Way Out Of Poverty

After listening to President Obama's State of the Union, I started thinking again about what we have all known for years. The way out of poverty is EDUCATION. This is not just an opinion, it's a fact. For the last decade our country's focus has been on war, getting out of the fiscal mess, dealing with the financial crisis, immigration, gun control, and the debt ceiling. All these issues are important, but education, without which nothing else matters, has been demoted in importance. All you hear is that congress wants to cut the number of teachers, reduce the hours of operation for libraries, cut grants for research. By reducing the amount of money spent on education, our leaders are saying that education is just not that important. Nothing could be further from the truth. The proof is that during the last two decades our country has slipped from being tops in education, to an embarassing 37th among developed nations. This trend must be reversed, so that the U.S. can regain its place as a top nation educationally. Statistics show that children who receive early childhood education will do better in grade school and high school, and are more likely to go to college. In the 19th century,immigrant Andrew Carnegie, came to America. He built an industrial empire, including a steel empire, that made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. He was also one of the great philanthropists of his time. His idea was to spread learning and love of learning to all, by opening public libraries throughout America and England. He did this, and created a network of public libraries for all to enjoy. The idea of the library came from Benjam Franklin, who a century earlier, had created the idea of the lending library, but Carnegie took it to the next level. In 1998 John Wood, a rising executive at Microsoft, left the company to change the world. His mission was to change the world one book and one child at a time, by setting up libraries in developing world. His program, called Room to Read, has created a network of over 7,500 libraries and 830 schools throughout rural and poor communities in Asia and Africa. John has been recognized in the worldwide media as a "21st century Andrew Carnegie," building a public library infrascructure to help the develping world break the cycle of poverty through the lifelong gift of education. I look at the modern libarries of the 21st century and can't believe how they have evolved in the past decades. Without national and local funding, library services will be drastically cut, leaving thousands of people without the opportunity to read and use the computer. Education is the way out of poverty, and we must do whatever it takes to give our nations youth the educational tools to compete in the 21st century. Early childhood education and libraries, which will produce a lifelong love of learning, will help achieve this goal.