ENLIGHTEN UP, AMERICA!

A longtime disgrace for the U.S. of A. is the unavoidable burden of indebtedness required to work through a vocational or college education, at whatever level. Forgiving these debts after their affliction is only a short-term bandaide measure which ignores the cause of the wound and does nothing to prevent the bleeding at its source. Why should public financing (barebones) of schools through the secondary level be an acceptable arrangement (though currently under duress from the privateers of the education business), yet for vocational school and college, everybody is on their own?

Free public universal education is essential for a healthy, happy society and economy, as well as to promote and perpetuate American pre-eminence in all kinds of scholarly, artistic, scientific, technological, industrial, military and entrepreneurial fields – and for that purpose we have taxes, happily contributed by (or wrathfully wrung from) the topmost levels of our economy, for its own perpetuation. We have long passed the point of no limits on public financing of the military, and yet higher education, “just a capitalistic commodity,” is left dependent on the individual’s financial capacity. If this opinion sounds repulsively socialistic to some, to me it is a vital matter of America’s positive and joyous survival in an increasingly dangerous and dreary world. I think America can still light the way.

Bill Cornelison Bandera