The Future of the United States

Grace Urban

HI 100 F

Professor Naclerio

December 2, 2015

The future of the United States is both a threat and a promise. This country is not a puppy anymore, it has grown into a fierce purebred. The United States will be nothing less than top dog, so it is important that we take the steps to ensure that no one will threaten our reign as alpha.

To start, religion is off the table. The United States already enforces the separation of church and state. God does not belong as one of the figureheads of the most powerful country in the world. Citizens should believe in physical truth. “You, as a man, know any other man from the outside appearance. You think as you see. And you see as far only as you have eyes”^[1]. As human beings, we know what we can experience with our senses. Faith in God exists to fill in the gaps where our senses fail. Leaning on a crutch like religion is a sign of weakness. To move forward, the United States must let go of faith and search for reason.

Since the search for reason requires a great deal of intellect, the time and money that was once poured into religion will now be allocated towards education. Education is by far the most important aspect of a society. Good and proper education plays a great role in shaping the future of the country. We have the brawn, now we have to have the brains. It is time we take a page out of China’s book. The new education system of the United States will be structured so that students will not waste a second that they could be learning. 

Dropping out will no longer be an option. Students will be required to attend all 12 years of schooling in addition to higher education. Higher education represents all colleges, universities, institutes and technical schools beyond high school. Since the government will no longer be funding churches, the money will go towards ensuring that every single citizen is able to attend the required schooling. 

        The goal of education is to acquire knowledge. “There are two ways of acquiring knowledge, one through reason, the other by experiment. Argument reaches a conclusion and compels us to admit it, but it neither makes us certain nor so annihilates doubt that the mind rests calm in the intuition of truth, unless it finds this certitude by way of experience”^[2]. The more we experiment and explore, the more we are going to know and understand. The more we understand the world, the better we can control it as well as better it. For example…  

“Even if a man that has never seen fire, proves by good reasoning that fire burns, and devours and destroys things, nevertheless the mind of one hearing his arguments would never be convinced, nor would he avoid fire until he puts his hand or some combustible thing into it in order to prove by experiment what the argument taught. But after the fact of combustion is experienced, the mind is satisfied and lies calm in the certainty of truth. Hence argument is not enough, but experience is”^[3].

Knowing is not the same as understanding. The goal of the new education system will be to help everyone not only know the world beyond the classroom, but understand it as well. 

Disease weakens the population, so it is important that we take advantage of our education to eliminate the threat. “The knowledge of anything, since all things have cause, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health”^[4].  In knowing the causes, we are steps closer to finding cures.

Cancer is a horrible disease that has no cure. “In 2015, an estimated 1,658,370 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States and 589,430 people will die from the disease”^[5]. With the new education system, citizens of the United States will be able to tackle cancer in a new way. Citizens will be equipped with more knowledge and new ways of thinking. “And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease”^[6]. Through experimentation and experimentation, our highly equipped and educated society can bring the number of new cases down to 0.

By improving the education system of the United States, we are improving every aspect of the country. One day, that preschooler will become the next president. Education helps us to be healthy, save many lives, boosts economic growth, earn money, raise quality crop, promote peace in the society, eradicate poverty, remove gender discrimination and inequality, promote women and children rights, bring good governance, and remove corruption, amongst many other things. Education trains our brains for anything life throws our way. If something bites us, we will be equipped with the knowledge to bite back twice as hard.

And when we bite, we bite hard. The United States has had a relatively short history compared to that of other countries, but nevertheless has had quite the journey. The puppy has faced a variety of hardships from a rocky revolution to a terrible recession and everything in between, but it has successfully overcome these challenges, hardening us into the purebred we are today. We have emerged from every crisis a little stronger, and a little wiser, surprising the world again and again with our resilience.