Managing America- What is the Economic Value of Education?

The education of man, in terms of practical value remains in doubt, like other values about which men have disputed since the birth of Cain and Abel; the practical value of the educational universe, both public and private has never been stated in dollars.

This economic problem concerning the value of education, started in England in 1838, has continued for years, unconsciously, as a vegetable, the outside world working as it never had worked before.

In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine.

The reason is; they are overladen with inert ideas. Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things, harmful. From the very beginning of education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. 

The discovery which they make, is that general ideas, give an understanding of that stream of events which pours through there life. 

By understanding I mean more than a mere logical analysis, though that is included.

Of course, education should be useful, whatever your aim in life.

In our system of education we are to guard against this mental dryrot. The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark of vitality.

But if education is not useful, what is it?

Education was useful to Saint Augustine, Thomas Jefferson, and it was useful to Napoleon. It is useful, because understanding is useful, if only the use of knowledge of the past helps equip us for use in the present.

We have to ask the question; what knowledge best fits a man for the discharge of present daily functions and are these functions wholly overlooked in education?

What is the need for school courses which, bear upon economic, political and social duties?

And are these the only ones that occupy a prominent place in History?

Mr. Martin Chekel, a noted international businessman and author of the thought provoking “Managing America” six book series and the retrospective eight book series “The Diary of American Foreign Policy 1938 – 1945” that laid the foundation for US foreign policy the past seventy-four years.