Why we spend "so much" on education...

I'm a teacher by personality and trade.  I'm married to a teacher.  My (2nd) sister is a teacher.  My eldest sister home schools her two boys.  My mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and countless friends are teachers...  We teach, we are passionate educators. 

One thing that has irked me about education is the lack of importance placed upon it by our society.  One mark of what is important to a society can be seen by where they toss their cash.  Education takes money and lot of it.  If you look at the graphic below.. there, the gray.. keep looking, it's there..  See it? 2%...  I'm not diminishing any category, I'm not suggesting that creating a budget is easy.  What I am suggesting is that education in this country IS grossly underfunded. 




We send messages to students by our underfunding;  school isn't important so we're cutting days.  Education isn't important, so we're not going to give your teacher an aid to deal with 30 1st graders.  School isn't important, so we're not going to maintain your facilities (sorry about the rain drops on your sadly outdated text books).  Ok, you get the point here.  No, funding isn't everything, but to suggest that teachers should teach "out of the goodness of their hearts" or that they "understand they aren't in it for the money" is absurd.  Teachers should be able to live well on their salary.  Education is the basis for all of society. 

Ok, I'm off my soap box. 

One thing that I really admire about the Qataris is their commitment to education.  They acknowledge the importance of education and fund it incredibly.  I know we don't have the oil resources that Qatar does, but they choose where to spend and so do we.  I read this article the other day on why Qatar is investing so much in education.  Check it out and let me know what you think.