You're Not A Snob Unless You Own Your Own Oil Well.

Thomas L Freidman, one of my favorite commentators had an article in the N.Y. Times today that tells about the testing of all 15 year olds in 65 countries around the world for proficiency in math and science every two years. They also compared those test scores to the saleable natural resources in those same countries. Ya know what they found? The countries with the most natural resources had the lowest scores, and the countries with the least natural resources had the highest scores. Can you imagine that? There were a few exceptions where countries like Canada also had high scores, but those countries saved the income from those resources and invested them in education instead of spending that income on giveaways to the populace among other vises. In other words, the "drill baby drill" mentality suggests a nation so overcome by the desire to have the good life that they're willing to throw away the opportunity to be self reliant. See, the idea is that if you don't have natural resources, then the people must become the resource. Now I don't know who had the idea of comparing the test scores with the natural resources, but somebody did. It does point to a reliance on those reserves instead of education. The unfortunate thing, for us in America, is that we're too big a country to put so many of our eggs into that basket. Because there just aren't enough oil wells to go around. So if you're left out in the cold, without an oil well to heat your life, with state after state, county after county, school district after school district cutting back on the education they're providing, and the federal government forced to cut back, and nobody truly trying to improve the educational experience, and some suggesting it's snobbish to get an education anyway, if you're one of the ones left out, you're getting the short end of the stick. Why would anyone think it's snobbish to get an education? If you're going to be a carpenter or plumber or production worker or whatever, it wouldn't hurt you to know how to do the work, the best way. That almost always means some form of education. There should be a word for people who have that backwards Maybe we should invent the word "Bons".