The more we spend on schools today, the less we’ll have to spend on missiles tomorrow

[tabatha]

His Libraries, 12,000 So Far, Change Lives

ONE of the legendary triumphs of philanthropy was Andrew Carnegie’s construction of more than 2,500 libraries around the world. It’s renowned as a stimulus to learning that can never be matched — except that, numerically, it has already been surpassed several times over by an American man you’ve probably never heard of.

I came here to Vietnam to see John Wood hand out his 10 millionth book at a library that his team founded in this village in the Mekong Delta — as hundreds of local children cheered and embraced the books he brought as if they were the rarest of treasures. Wood’s charity, Room to Read, has opened 12,000 of these libraries around the world, along with 1,500 schools.

Yes, you read that right. He has opened nearly five times as many libraries as Carnegie, even if his are mostly single-room affairs that look nothing like the grand Carnegie libraries. Room to Read is one of America’s fastest-growing charities and is now opening new libraries at an astonishing clip of six a day. In contrast, McDonald’s opens one new outlet every 1.08 days.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/opinion/sunday/kristof-his-libraries-12000-so-far-change-lives.html?_r=2

[mzteris]

1. Education or Incarceration... n/t

[glowing]

2. What did you mean by this comment?

Why would young girls in small, impoverished communities around the world, in hard to reach places, be "incarcerated"? The idea of educating people and especially women, is something every human should have the ability to attain. The story pointed to a young girl who dropped out of school to help her family. He convinced them to send her back and paid for her school fees. She's risen to the top of her class and wishes to go to University. She's a smart young woman, who without this man, would more likely be heading for marriage and a continued impoverished life. Perhaps her education will help her to bring her town out of poverty or into a better living way. I don't see why she would be facing jail?

[mzteris]

3. I was pointing out that we either spend money on education

or incarceration.

But in reality, those young girls in those small impoverished communities would be just as "incarcerated" - in planned loveless marriages where they are nothing more than chattel. So the statement still stands.

We either spend the money to educate people or spend that money dealing with their lack of education.

[RickFromMN]

4. What saddens me are the number of young going into the military because they can't find a job.

I realize I don't have any statistical data.

Unfortunately, I have friends whose children are going into the military.
I talk to the children and they tell me it's a job.
They tell me they have friends who are going in the military for the same reason.

Please forgive me for calling eighteen year old and twenty year old adults children.
When one gets to my age...I sometimes call anyone under the age of fifty a child.