Education: Why reactive not proactive?

This morning as I stood i the shower I thought about what I was going to blog about today, and I thought about all of my past blogs and I have decided I like blogging.  The reason I like to blog is because it is like a journal or a place to vent or a place to ask advise or a place to make a statement.  The best part is that sometimes no one reads your post, and other times you can get alot of responses.  Once I had this epiphany I then move onto choosing a topic to blog about.  I recapped my Tech Ed class from the night before in which we had talked about the uses of pod-casting. In class we had talked and seen great uses for pod-casts like news and sports and speeches, and then my blog idea hit me, just about the time the water in the shower started to get cold.  I want to blog about the fact that there are so many more examples and ways that teaching and learning can occur now than in any point in the history.  The example of the school in the south that had students who spent long commutes on the school bus and how they were given ipods and laptops to use on their ride.  The children were quiet and learning.  I realize there is an expense to giving children this technology, but the way I see it is we can put money and time and resources into helping teach and educate or ewe can spend even more of the same on welfare and jails for uneducated and unmotivated adults.  The way I see it is at this point our society is reactive.  We spend lots of funds on jails and on human service programs to help people who can not provide for themselves, when we could just as easily shifty our goals and focus and educate and prepare people to be able to support themselves.  Some people will say that there are lots of jobs that would be lost in jails and at service organizations, and my response would be that switch the jobs to fields that are similar, yet the focus or goal is a proactive approach.  I worked in social work for ten years prior to returning to school, and the number of people who are not educated or motivated to be successful is disgusting.  I as a future teacher want to take the challenge of leading the charge to change our society and how we live.  I believe teachers are the key to this happening as they influence both families and children more than any other force around.  The problem is the teachers need the support of the government and that is going to be a struggle.  I do have hope and that is that people want and see that we need to change and since the people are the power than lets hope we can inspire and encourage change.