Education, science and research are investments...

I find it to be discouraging and angering that education, science, and research are areas that suffer some of the first cuts when times get though. Worse when the ones who make those cuts talk about how important these areas are for the continued development of people and communities.

Theres is a dire need to see educations, science and research not as expenditures. They are investments, we need to have them well founded so they can bear the fruits we need them to make a better world. These are pillar that make our modern world, and without them we wouldn't have the things we have now, nor we can hope to make the world we live in a better place.

Through education, we can enrich peoples lives while making better citizens. Well educated citizens are beneficial not only to the community they live in, but to themselves since they can actually do something for themselves in various ways. They are only limited by they own imaginations and capabilities, that can help them to go far in life while doing constructive things for themselves and others they come in contact with.

Science has given us all things that have improved the quality of life exponentially in the last century, and can do much more. Yet, to be able to deliver on that, science needs to be well founded to attract the minds to work on the projects that show more promise to deliver the results.

If we can't give them what they need to work, and live, we can't reasonably expect the results needed.

Last, we need to have good research facilities if we want to be able to find a way to apply what science learns. Knowledge by itself is not very useful, if it can't be applied in some way, shape, or form to solve a practical problem. But, it takes time and money to find a way to put them in use.

If that research is well founded, and correctly managed, it becomes an investment. Research is a necessary step to bring science to use in as many areas of human experience as possible. Avoiding it is a risky move, since a potentially beneficial concept can do harm if it's not properly tuned to do its best work.

Without making substantial investments on these three areas, we have more to lose than what we can imagine. Investing on education, science and research, is not only investing on the present; but in a better future too.