Global and Local

If there is a global crisis I should see local effects. This looks more like a necessary than a sufficient condition. I may have ruined my life and human life can still go smoothly, on the other hand if there is a relation, my personal predicament is an indication of trouble ahead for all of us. I really don't know, but here I express a few ideas that may be useful to others.

Schools in first world countries get more money than schools in poor countries. It is not clear to me that the performance is proportional to investement; there may be a rule of diminishing returns at play here. Granted, the US gets more Nobel prizes than other countries, but that in itself does not prove that double the investment leads to double the result. Republican administrations in the US have been reducing public school per capita investment. To the extent that test scores have not deteriorated proportionally, there have been efficiency improvements. On the other hand, it is definitely in the realm of possibilities that the American public school system as it was in the fifties will not come back any time soon. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of a great nation.

My gut feeling is that there are great students and gret teachers that under dire conditions perform amazing feats. But barring extraordinary individuals it is logical that less investment eventually will lead to very bad schools; maybe already the public schools in the US are bad. I see then that my job may be in jeopardy, and if I am not allowed to do what I was trained to do, then we have waste. What worries me is that this waste may be a symptom of a dying system.