Student Writer Selected as Honorable Mention

ARROWHEAD STUDENT WRITER RECEIVES HONORABLE MENTION RECOGNITION

Stossel in the Classroom announced the winners of its third annual student essay contest. Bri Meyer, an Arrowhead senior and journalism student in Ms. Liz Jorgensen’s class, has been awarded an Honorable Mention in the contest. For her essay, she received $50 and a certificate.

Students age 13 to 18 were asked to conduct research through books, videos and the internet and then write an essay about whether government or private individuals were better at solving problems.

There were 4,000 submissions from students across the country, with 225 essays chosen as prize winners. Bri, as an Honorable Mention, was among the top 6% of all the essays submitted. 

Congratulations to Bri!

The following is Bri's essay:

Bri Meyer
Honorable Mention Winer

                In his book No They Can’t, John Stossel claims that the American government is ineffective, unequipped, and unable to solve the modern problems of the world. He claims individuals can do these things. I believe that he is not only correct in his claim, but that the evidence against government piles higher and higher each year. Based on the drastic differences between the funding and innovations of the private scientific sector versus the government based agencies, Stossel affirms that in modern times, government simply “can’t.”

                Scientific funding is a relatively recent issue in politics. The industrial revolution caused a boom in financial need to support the new methods of research, and for awhile, these methods worked. Since the 1940s, the National Science Foundation has funded approximately 11,000 new projects each year. Unfortunately, this governmentally supported system no longer accommodates the financial requirement of scientific research labs.

The best example of this comes from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA. Last year, President Obama terminated the shuttle program as part of his plan to end wasteful programs. Since as early as 2005, NASA as a whole has been in danger of extinction. Although NASA lives on, it continues to experience financial instability and has lost its biggest component—improvement of space travel. Shuttles were not worth the time and money they were costing the government.

During that time, however, Sir Richard Branson and the private sector of science have been working to create civilian shuttles and more. Brason’s Virgin Galactic, the space division of his company, started researching shuttle designs as early as 2004 through the X-Prize foundation. Since 1995, this non-profit organization gives scientists a chance to invent new technologies in competition for a high money prize. Stossel substantiates his theory that individuals can succeed more than government through the idea of the X-Prize: because a prize is offered, a wider variety of scientists will be enticed to create products quickly and efficiently.

Currently, Branson has a fleet of four space crafts—two of which are space buses with more than 550 ticket holders. As NASA slowly lost government funding and support, Branson built his fleet by combining his own money with intelligence from top scientists throughout the world. Individuals and private companies have the power and wealth to support these scientists in their efforts, which leads to more cutting edge products in a shorter amount of time, no matter the financial condition of the country.  

The financial shortcomings of governmental science only account for half of the problem. Within the past 30 years, the government has slacked on not only the funding of science, but the innovation. In order to succeed in the economy today, science labs need to create new technology in short amounts of time—an expensive prospect. This is the reason why so many labs have requested government aid. This leaves the government floundering for money and drowning in rules, regulations, and paperwork with no time for its own research. The complexity of its system is what prevents new technologies to emerge.  

A great example of lack of innovation came with the BP oil spill in 2010. The government immediately stepped in to save the day, but used the same system to clean the oil as the one used 21 years ago to clean the Exxon Valdez spill. This left the government looking like saviors even though the technology gap thwarted the speed and efficiency of the clean-up effort. The government requires mass market cars to be 35 miles per gallon to help the planet, yet it is reluctant to change even the most serious of its global pollution solutions.

In the private sector, improvement has not been stalled. The X-Prize and other private companies have held contests not just for space travel, but for high miles per gallon cars and for oil spill cleanup. In the 2010 Progressive Insurance Automotive contest, X-Prize offered money to the team that could create a car with 100 mpg, low CO₂ emissions, and potential to be manufactured by the mass market. The winning team not only achieved this, but created a car that runs 102.5 mpg on high efficiency, ethanol blend fuel.  Similar to this, Wendy Schmidt sponsored a $1 million X-Prize to create a newer, more proficient way to clean up world oil spills from tankers and ocean platforms after seeing the devastating effects of outdated government methods in the 2010 oil spill,. The winners were able to update the government’s technology and triple the speed and effectiveness of oil cleanup. These contests, sponsored by private companies looking to improve the science of modern times, have together created more new technology for the world than anything the government has done in a long time.

Yes, the government may provide financial support to various labs around the country, but that will never be enough to get America into a new wave of scientific discovery. Government money is too little and spread too thin to accomplish anything significant. But in the private sector, individuals and companies with money and means can take their initiative and create useful, cutting edge equipment in half the time. They not only have more money to spend, but have the world’s brightest scientists under their employ. Because the scientific funding and innovation of individuals has readily surpassed the government, I believe Stossel is correct when saying that in modern technological times, the government can no longer handle the responsibility of scientific discovery.  

Congratulations Bri!!!