DATE: Friday, November 28, 1997             TAG: 9711260044

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B15  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Keith Monroe 

                                            LENGTH:   89 lines

INVESTING IN EDUCATION WHERE'S THEMISTOCLES WHEN YOU NEED HIM? IF VIRGINIA GIVES EVERYONE A CAR TAX REBATE, PERHAPS EVERYONE IN THE STATEWILL BUY A NEW CAR. BUT IN 10 YEARS, THEY WILL OWN LARGELY RUST AND MEMORIES.

Does history repeat itself? All the time. At least, the same problems keep coming up. Take, for instance, the issue addressed by the Aesop fable concerning the grasshopper and the ants.

The feckless grasshopper wanted to play all day, only to freeze when winter came. Whereas, the industrious ants took advantage of good times to prepare for bad. When the chill winds blew, they were cozy, warm and well-fed.

Though that story was old when Aesop was telling it in the 6th century B.C., it's still contemporary. Baby boomers, for instance, want to spend cheerfully with no thought to the morrow, and they want their taxes low. But they are going to expect Social Security and Medicare when they reach retirement. It ain't gonna happen, unless they drop the grasshopper act, get more ant-like and invest methodically now.

Similarly, we've just gone through a gubernatorial campaign predicated on the notion that newfound revenues should be rebated to the taxpayers rather than invested in the roads and schools we'll need in the future.

That's a familiar story as well. The debate has taken place many times before, and James Buchan tells one version in his new book, Frozen Desire: The Meaning of Money.

``In 483 B.C. silver was discovered at Laurion, about fifteen miles outside Athens. The silver mined was minted into the famous drachma coins known as Athena's Owls, after the familiar of the goddess that was punched into the reverse. Some men urged that they be distributed to the voting population at ten drachmas per family, but on the pressing insistence of Themistocles, son of Neocles, the money was used to pay the wrights to build two hundred warships. Three years later, when the Persians overran Attica, the population had to be evacuated. The city was burned but Themistocles' triremes destroyed the Persian fleet for ever at the famous battle of Salamis in 480 B.C.''

No doubt Themistocles was denounced by his political enemies as an alarmist, a killjoy, a tax-and-spend liberal. But three years after forgoing a rebate of their car tax, the Athenians were probably damned glad they'd listened to him and invested in defense rather than indulging in a spending spree. If each family had spent 10 drachmas on a new chariot, they would have perished in the conflagration and some Persian would have been out doing wheelies in the chariot.

More to the point, with the Persians triumphant there would have been no Golden Age. No Parthenon carved by Phidias. No Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. No philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. No mathematics. No western history as inaugurated by Herodotus and Thucydides. At least, a vastly different and poorer western history.

Similarly, if Virginia gives everyone a car tax rebate, perhaps everyone in the state will buy a new car. But in 10 years, they will own largely rust and memories. Whereas, if Virginia makes an investment in better schools, 10 years from now we may possess a better-educated work force that's better paid and more competitive. We may produce no Platos or Euripides, but with a little luck we may produce the workers needed to staff chip plants or biotech facilities.

It may be argued that the Greek version of this cautionary tale highlights the need to spend for national defense, not education. But if assuring a strong defense is the paramount duty of the national government, providing a competitive education is the paramount duty of state government.

And in today's world, national might is often measured by the ability of the nation's work force to innovate, to work smarter, to compete. Therefore, investment in education is an implicit investment in national defense. If we aren't prepared to win the battle of the marketplace by educating a generation of savvy workers, we can be left behind by history just as surely as if defeated in war. Furthermore, tomorrow's wars will be won by the military with the best chips or optics or aeronautics - in the labs and universities as much as in the field.

It was Karl Marx who said: ``History repeats itself - the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.'' But it will be no laughing matter if, in our desire for instant gratification, we fail to prepare for a future that so obviously is coming.

Yet that appears to be Virginia's intention. Like the Athenians who wanted their 10 drachmas, we want our car tax rebate. Democrats and Republicans alike are rushing to rubber-stamp the Gilmore mandate. The Athenians had a Themistocles to turn the debate from incautious self-aggrandizement to prudent investment. Virginia doesn't.

But lack of leadership is no excuse for willingness to be led down the primrose path. Each of us is responsible for the future of Virginia. If we let our appetite for lower taxes persuade us to shortchange our children, undermine our educational system and degrade our competitive position, the fault is not our lack of a Themistocles but our own grasshopper lack of foresight. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot.

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