We're failing our children with education, we're failing our

In the words of Carol Moseley Braun, “We’re failing our children with education, we’re failing our environment.” This cry is not a mere complaint—it is a warning, a lament, and a call to courage. Education and the environment are the twin pillars upon which the future of humanity rests. If we neglect one, the other will falter; if we betray both, the edifice of civilization itself will collapse. The quote is both prophecy and admonition: we are betraying not only the children of this age but also the unborn generations who will inherit the ruins of our neglect.

To fail our children’s education is to leave their minds hungry and unprepared. A society that withholds wisdom or corrupts knowledge leaves its heirs blind in a world that requires vision. To fail our environment is to wound the very body of the earth—the soil that feeds us, the rivers that quench our thirst, the skies that carry the breath of life. Together, these failures spell a doom more profound than war or famine, for they are betrayals at the root of being: the betrayal of inheritance itself.

The ancients knew that the child was the vessel of continuity. They also revered the land as a living parent. To poison the soil or silence the streams was to dishonor the gods and endanger the tribe. And yet, in our modern arrogance, we cut down forests as if they were without spirit, and we crowd children into classrooms that feed them memorization but starve them of wonder. Thus, the warning of Moseley Braun echoes like the cry of Cassandra, spoken but not heeded, foretelling calamity if wisdom is ignored.

Consider the tragedy of the Dust Bowl in 1930s America. Farmers, having forgotten the ancient laws of stewardship, stripped the plains of their grasses in pursuit of short-term gain. The earth, robbed of its roots, rose up in wrath, and storms of dust buried homes, livestock, and livelihoods. Thousands of families wandered like exiles in their own land, their children coughing in the blackened winds. This was a failure of environmental care, born of a failure of education—an ignorance of how the earth must be tended with patience and reverence.

To the heart that loves, this teaching is clear: when we abandon education, we cripple the mind; when we abandon the environment, we poison the body. Children without knowledge cannot build; children without a living earth will have nothing upon which to build. The two failures are bound together like the strands of a rope, pulling the future into darkness unless we cut them free with wisdom.

What lesson, then, must we carry? It is this: that the education of our children must not be narrow, but deep, teaching them not only to count the stars but to marvel at them; not only to measure the tree but to cherish its shade. And the care of our environment must not be seen as charity, but as duty—the sacred responsibility of heirs guarding a treasure. To despise either is to despise life itself.

And so, let each one act. Plant a tree where one has fallen. Read to a child who is hungry for stories. Learn again the ancient ways of stewardship—rotating the soil, preserving the waters, honoring the seasons. Demand of rulers that schools be sanctuaries of growth, and that laws guard the rivers and skies. These actions are not grand armies or golden thrones; they are humble, human deeds—but such deeds are the true stones upon which the future temple will be built.

Therefore, children of tomorrow, hear these words: Do not wait for kings to act or prophets to descend. The salvation of your education and your environment rests not in the hands of the few, but in the faithful hands of the many. Guard the mind, guard the earth, and the future shall not be a wasteland, but a garden where wisdom and life bloom together.