The problem is overpopulation. The number of students keeps increasing at an astounding rate. The United States, being the third most populated nation in the world, and holding a growth rate of about 0.65% for those school-age, is quickly starting to feel the negative effects of a high birth and low mortality rates. The overall population is rising at a rate which the infrastructure, entitlement, and other government departments can not keep up with.
While most agree that simply lowing the number of students in the class room won't cause an automatic change in the scores and information learned by the students, it will, however, allow teachers to take on more effective strategies for the students in the classroom by "dropping lecture-style approaches and providing more frequent feedback and interaction." The instructors will be able to give more personalized time to each student, and not have spend a significant amount of time getting the class under control.
However lowering class sizes will raise the cost of education, by hiring more teachers, expanding building space, and providing classroom materials. With the poor economic conditions, and lack of qualified instructors. This will be difficult for State governments to fit into their budgets, due to demand for funding in other areas, such as medicaid and medicare.
It is not just the youth of the nation that are starting to feel overcrowding problems, and reforms are needed in entitlement, education, healthcare, housing, and infrastructure to keep up with the growing population.
Soon the generation dubbed the "baby boomers" (Persons being born between years 1946 and 1964) will be entering retirement age, causing a strain on the social security and healthcare systems. This is also greeted by the fact that "echo boomers" (The subsequent generations from the baby boomers) are too few to be able to properly support their parents generation. Finally the "Millennials," are too few to support the echo boomers. This causes several problems:
First of all, there will be a massive strain on the social security system, with more citizens entering retirement than being active members of the labor force.
If we raise the retirement age to combat this, it will cause wide spread unemployment due to the aged population remaining in the workforce, leaving those recently graduating college jobless with a mound of student debt.
Another strain will be on the healthcare system, as the elderly do tend to be at a much higher risk of health problems then the younger generations. While it will be a golden age for the pharmaceutical companies, Medicare will be stretched thin.
Lastly, the youth voice in politics will largely be ignored. By virtue of shear numbers, the elderly will be able to sway elected officials on the local, state, and federal numbers. The AARP(American Association of Retired Persons) is one of the largest interest groups in the nation, which actively lobbies to the government to ""provide a wide range of unique benefits, special products, and services for our members" and identifies itself as "a nonprofit, nonpartisan membership organization for people age 50 and over ... dedicated to enhancing quality of life for all as we age."
While AARP has generated an immense amount of progress into increasing the quality of life for seniors, it does detract voice and power away from the youth-based interest groups, who are few in number, and low in financial power.
This problem should concern us all, as we will all be elderly one day. The changes to healthcare and entitlement programs to seniors need to be made now before the programs in place reach critical mass. Several solutions have been suggested including, increasing immigration of working aged persons, allowing more money into the tax system to help provide for those who need it. Also, reform of private saving and pensions has been a rising concentration, allowing corporations and business to take on more responsibility for their workers after retirement.
The population problem isn't unique to the United States. Population levels are reaching a critical point worldwide. Several nations, notably China and India have attempted the use of sterilization and laws restricting familial growth, including China's infamous one-child policy. These controversial measures have not had the kind of impact hoped, as both nations populations are still growing beyond control.
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| Government sponsored advertisement favoring the One-Child policy in China |
Equal opportunity and rights movements have found that the increased education and raised social status of women has reduced population growth. This is because when women have better economic opportunities and are able to enter the skilled labor force as something other than homemakers, they reduce the number of children they have. This has been seen as a preferable alternative to reduce overpopulation, but women's rights movements are slow to gain support in traditionalist and conservative cultures.
Around the world, the growing population produces increased amounts of waste, stretches the food and water supplies, and creates unemployment and overcrowding. There is no easy solution to the population problem, but that doesn't mean it can be ignored.
What do you think Woodland? What can be done at the global, national, and even individual levels to help alleviate this issue?
http://www.howmany.org/big_picture.php
http://www.aarp.org/?CMP=KNC-360I-google-CPA&HBX_PK=aarp.&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=aarp%2E&utm_campaign=G-Branded&360cid=SI_118856046_11414244393_1
http://www.census.gov/popclock/
http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/class-size/
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