What School Is For Or: Why Arizona Needs Seth Godin
- Become an informed citizen
- Be able to read for pleasure
- Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
- Do well on standardized tests
- Homogenize society, at least a bit
- Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
- Give kids something to do while parents work
- Teach future citizens how to conform
- Teach future consumers how to desire
- Build a social fabric
- Create leaders who help us compete on a world stage
- Generate future scientists who will advance medicine and technology
- Learn for the sake of learning
- Help people become interesting and productive
- Defang the proletariat
- Establish a floor below which a typical person is unlikely to fall
- Find and celebrate prodigies, geniuses and the gifted
- Make sure kids learn to exercise, eat right and avoid common health problems
- Teach future citizens to obey authority
- Teach future employees to do the same
- Increase appreciation for art and culture
- Teach creativity and problem solving
- Minimize public spelling mistakes
- Increase emotional intelligence
- Decrease crime by teaching civics and ethics
- Increase understanding of a life well lived
Remember when I got all bummed about the state of our state a few months ago? I was thinking about telling you, “I told you so,” or writing an equally dreary follow-up, but Brian was kind enough to beat me to it. Here’s a snippet from his Open Letter Governor Brewer and the Arizona State Legislature:
You believe that any tax is a bad tax and you laud your ability to cut, slash and refuse to pass any taxation. You tell us you are putting money back in our pockets. But the truth is you are simply stripping us of the services we want from our government. You tell us that we can choose private schools, home school or find the best education alternative for us and our children. What you do not tell us is that you are relegating our children to demonstrably inferior educational alternatives unless we are wealthy. We can not afford to live in a state which educates the children of the wealthy and relegates the rest to menial labor.
I’m not a socialist, or a liberal. I’m a businessman. I know what you do not and can not seem to understand. Prosperity is a result of investment. If you will not invest, you will not prosper. If you will not invest I will no longer invest in AZ either.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are things worth paying for. There are things worth sacrifice and, yes, even higher taxation. If our children, and our future are not worth that sacrifice what, I ask you, is?
Sam
“At the very time our nation is calling its universities to action… Arizona has gone in the opposite direction.”
Dr. Micheal Crow (President, Arizona State University)
February 3rd, 2009 at 8:48 am
So the question is…what do we do now? Do we flee this state and it’s antiquated laws and philosophies and old guard, wild, wild west bourgeoisie? Take our tax dollars to somewhere that they will be appreciated and put to a use we deem fit?
Or do we plan on leading a youth revolution in this state, running for all of its offices — including city and school-board level — and take back this place and shove it into the 21st century with us? The new parents and those soon to be new parents should be the ones rising up the most as it will be their children suffering the consequences.
So what do you say? Max revolution? Or max exodus?
(Honestly, i’m leaning towards exodus.)
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:07 am
I fundamentally disagree with saying that it is the school’s place or responsibility to do many of the things on that list. It is the family’s job to do half that list or more. It is also the failure of the family to step up and do its job that has caused the government to need to and even have the opportunity to step in and do the parenting themselves through the public school system.
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Dear Sam,
Your post makes me want to cry. I just relandscaped my front yard and redid my kitchen. I invested in my home and I invest in my community. It saddens me that my child, and the children of all Arizonans, are suffering under our current state government. Sigh…thanks for depressing me buddy!
Btw, I can’t believe you didn’t indicate, “Defang the proletariat”
as one of your bolded favorites!
February 4th, 2009 at 7:32 am
All I want to know is…what’s next? How do ordinary citizens combat this knowing our state is only going to get WORSE?
February 4th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Adam…
You and Sam need to both exodus to Oregon!
Ron
February 6th, 2009 at 8:39 am
There are some things on that list that I (as an educator) take issue with; however, that is besides the point.
Why is this cut happening in AZ? In OR, our school’s are getting cut because of the economic down turn. The state is simply not getting the revenue it thought it was going to get and therefor have to make cuts across its entire budget (our county’s mental health department has already taken a 10% cut across the board). In this year alone, my district will have to cut between 3.5 and 7.5 million (bugetted) dollars. The current plan to make up for this lack of money is to leave currently open jobs vacant and fill with subs, cut some field trips and athletic events, and potentially cut 5 days from the end of the school year (all employees will lose those day’s pay). While I think our district is doing the best it can in this situation, these cuts will no doubt have a HUGE impact on our students.
I’m not sure what the solution is.
(But I agree with Ron that you and Adam need to exodus up here… biking riding and snow boarding [respectively] happens in copious amounts.