Saturday night miscellany

Originally published July 2, 2011

It is an apparently quiet night in the 'hood, although it is of course still a bit early.  No sooner did I mention the quiet than the evening was interrupted by the sounds of Independence Day firecrackers in the distance.  Still, the intense heat and humidity that visited us on Thursday and Friday has abated and we can now breathe again--possibly without the assistance of the air conditioner.

As I've state many times, I can be a voracious reader, devouring an entire edition of a newspaper in a matter of minutes.  I keep track with the outside world primarily through the internet and, although I don't engage as much as I should, I always have a book or more in some stage of completion.  OK, that's a stretch; some things I've read several chapters of, but remember so little of what I read that it is necessary to begin again.  Thus, the books can collect dust.  My daughter insists that I try the tasty looking recipes that sometimes adorn the covers of Bon Appetit that arrive monthly, and--since she's become more than a decent sous chef--I acquiesce most of the time.

But I will also cull materials from a variety of sources and keep them in a folder on the desktop in hopes of their spurring my writing into action.  Tonight is the time to visit a few of these unrelated topics and throw in a comment or two.  I don't feel particularly creative, but have promised myself to get back to the regime of attempting to write.

It seems as though nearly every day I read of continued efforts to re-invent our educational system or articles and studies that result in demonizing the profession of teaching.  This piece, that I discovered back in April, seems to sum up many of the problems that face us.  We are a rudderless society, valuing test scores over "real" learning.  We have seen the results of the "No Child Left Behind" law, which is, of course, "teaching to the test".  Is this an honest assessment of what happens in our classrooms?  Is this a worthy assessment upon which the promotion or retention of teachers should be placed?  We're seeing the results and they're not getting any better.  The thing is that they cannot.  It is impossible for all of the students in our nation's classrooms to become magically "proficient" by 2014 or 3014 for that matter.  We can try all we might to raise the level of every child to some kind of indeterminate medium, but some of them simply aren't going to make it.  Call me an educational elitist if you will, but I am just being realistic.

Recently, news from our Iowa state legislature in Des Moines has indicated that school districts will be allowed 0% growth during the 2012-13 fiscal year.  Yes, you read that correctly:  0%.  If health care costs rise, which they will, too bad.  If the cost of fuel for school buses rises, which it will, too bad.  The economy has to completely stagnate, in terms of inflation and all other costs to even maintain the status quo and any intelligent person (I suppose I would not include our current governor among that number) knows it.  Thus, we will see again massive cuts in programs and personnel.  And who suffers?  The laid off teachers?  Yes, but in the end, the real pain will be felt by the students who will not have the opportunities that their parents had for a decent and holistic education.

The arts are always an easy target for funding reductions and the State of Kansas has already eliminated all (yes all) funding for the arts.  Things in Wisconsin are nearly as bad, as indicated here.  The author points out that the State of Wisconsin spends 14 cents per capita in arts grants, while its neighbor to the west, Minnesota, spends $5.69.  That's $5.69 for every one of Minnesota's 5,303,925 men, women and children.  And while the state of Florida's support for the arts is nowhere near its previous $13 million peak in 2006-07, things are headed back in the right direction, with an increase from only $950.000 in fiscal 2011 to $2.1 million in fiscal 2012.

One cannot say enough about the importance of the arts.  This importance is difficult to quantify; you can't measure it with a fill-in-the-bubble test, but its effects will be seen as future generations look back upon the legacy that has been left for them.  Our second President, John Adams, knew all too well the importance of the arts, not for his own generation, but for those to come:  “I must study politics and war, that my sons may have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, natural history and naval architecture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, tapestry, and porcelain.”

Although I sometimes wished I had said that, I am most glad that I didn't have to.