Living long and staying in school
From the New York Times (free registration required):
The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.
Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education ‘keeps coming up.’
And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial, money and health insurance, for example, pale in comparison.
Instead, Dr. James Smith (a health economist at the RAND Corporation) and others say, what may make the biggest difference is keeping young people in school. A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age.
As someone currently in her 19th year of school (yeah, doctoral program!) this is interesting to me. The article posits that the effects come partly out of educated people making better choices about their lives and preparing for the future more effectively, but also out of increased social networking. In other words, people who are socially isolated don’t live as long as people with many family members and friendships – many of which come directly out of school environments.
This is all especially interesting, though, in an era when sources of all stripes are pointing out rather urgently that school-as-we-know-it is an outdated Industrial Revolution invention – but still the norm in a digital world whose high-skill jobs demand communication and research skills, design literacy, innovative ideas, and the ability to engage with many technologies. Those aren’t the kinds of knowledge I think about as benefits of taking standardized tests and reading textbooks…
An article like this one raises so many questions for me: Will it soon become possible to assess the benefits of different kinds of schooling? Will kids who are educated in technology-rich environments (possibly through playing epistemic games) be more likely to develop stronger work skills and make better decisions about their bodies and their lives? Will people with up-to-date skills actually live longer or better? Will people with active digital networks – IM buddies, mobile phones, characters in virtual worlds – see similar kinds of long-term social benefits through technology?
I suppose for now that it is impossible to tell, but I would bet that it’s about to become a very fruitful line of research in this world that is changing so quickly. I wonder how long it will take for American schools to begin to realize these changes, too.
