Time & Perspective Quote by Charles Kuralt

Kuralt’s line carries the polite cadence of a public-radio benediction, but the engine underneath is blunt economics and civic fear. He starts with “Since my retirement,” a classic American credential: I’ve earned the right to slow down, so what I’m doing now must be pure conscience. That setup lets him smuggle in a harder claim without sounding punitive. He isn’t praising education as self-actualization; he’s warning that neglect becomes unaffordable.

The key phrase is “a society like this.” It’s intentionally vague and deeply pointed. Kuralt is invoking a wealthy, modern America that tells itself it’s exceptional, then insisting that exceptionalism comes with maintenance costs. “Just can’t afford” frames social work not as charity but as infrastructure, as necessary as bridges. It’s a pragmatic moral argument that anticipates the backlash to social programs: if you won’t fund them because you’re compassionate, fund them because you’re rational.

Then comes the most fraught term: “uneducated underclass.” It’s a 1990s formulation, when the “underclass” label was already a political weapon - a way to talk about poverty while implying permanence, pathology, even threat. Kuralt’s subtext is not to demonize that group, but to deny the comforting myth that inequality can be safely walled off. Education becomes a preventive measure against social fragmentation.

Context matters: as a beloved storyteller of ordinary America, Kuralt is leveraging his soft authority to argue for a professional, institutional response (social work) rather than sentimental volunteerism. The warmth of the delivery is the strategy; it’s how he makes a structural critique sound like common sense.