End of the School Year

 

The following is the text of my final message as President of Waco TSTA/NEA for the school year ending in June 2011.

 

… And Now We Come to the End of the Road

It’s amazing to me how quickly time goes. As I look back over the first year of my tenure as your President, I am amazed at how much change we’ve seen over the last year. I am more amazed at how much we still have to do.

This year started for me with a group of fresh, young faces, mostly recent college graduates, who appeared at New Teacher Orientation. This is one of my favorite events of the year, as it takes me back to that day twelve years ago when I first met the people I would share my inaugural teaching experience with. It reminds me of the successes I had as a first year teacher, and of the failures that I had (which were far more numerous, it seems) and that I learned from. New Teacher Orientation is always so full of promise. The joy that our young colleagues feel at the realization of the dream they’ve shared to become teachers is an almost palpable force in the room as they sit through lectures, PowerPoint presentations, and question-and-answer sessions. It reminds you that if you taught your class this way, you’d be called on the carpet for not using best practices to engage student learning, but I digress. Bright eyes and fresh faces are the order of the week and it is almost comical to see the realities of the profession start to sink in to these “rookie” educators. And, as each starts the journey of their career in public education, we see the impatience to finally get in the classroom, to finally get to feel the true joy that is teaching. Thinking back on this year’s NTO is a bittersweet memory.

Convocation and cheers, teacher in-service and meet the teacher night, we met our new colleagues and renewed the friendships that came with our ol…, “veteran”, colleagues, and we were off to the races. The question on every mind related to the search for a Superintendent for Waco Public Schools and there were many school board sessions, many community discussions, much to make of who would lead the district going forward.

Before we knew it, the first semester was wrapping and, as it always seems to fly by, it was the holiday season. We still didn’t know who our new Superintendent would be and we really did not know the problems that were going to come from a quarter that most of us give little, if any, thought to.

We found a new Superintendent, but as we were seeing and hearing about that decision, there was a new sound on the horizon.

The first rumbles were that distant thunder over the mountains. A group of newly-elected legislators were talking about a conservative budget. It was nothing new to political observers. Heck, the last time Texas had a liberal budget was ……. (I’m still trying to remember if Texas has ever had a liberal budget). But this was a group of legislators who had been elected by a new force, a new wing of the political landscape, a wing that had taken as its boogeyman the President and he was the guy they had all been elected to beat. Medicare, Social Security, and Public Education were all concepts that were anathema to these people. You can forget the fact that both parties have championed all three of these causes over the years. They certainly had.

As the Texas legislative session ramped up, moderate Republicans and Democrats of all stripes seemed to be running scared. The Tea Party favorites were carrying a big set of shears and they were aiming to take money out of the hide of every public service you could think of.

Health insurance for kids? Cut it. State contributions to Medicare and Medicaid? Cut them, too. Public education? Yep, here comes the butcher to cut away the fat. Ignore the fact that all of these programs are already as lean as they can get in Texas. Ignore the fact that there is no excess when you’re 44^th in the country in spending-per-pupil. These guys didn’t want to hear that.

Now, I try not to talk about issues outside of education and I just use these to bring out a point, but you have to wonder about the mentality of a group of people who are against public education. Every important thinker in history, from Aristotle and Plato to Franklin and Jefferson to Lincoln to Somerville and Roosevelt (all of them) have celebrated the importance of education, particularly in a democratic republic. Maybe that’s the problem. The people I just listed are folks who thought. Maybe that’s where the disconnect lies.

Regardless, the word came out of the legislature that there were going to be cuts to all sorts of State services and that public education was the biggest dog in the fight. Therefore, public education was also the biggest target. They came for us. It is time to recognize that there were many members of both Houses of the Texas Legislature in both parties who worked to minimize, even to eliminate, these evil cuts. Their dedication to making Texas the best State in the Union for education should not only be noted, it should be celebrated. Unfortunately, their support of public education may have made them bigger targets for those whose ignorance leads them to deride education.

Who are these who deride public education, you ask. These are people who believe what their masters tell them when they say that public education is not necessary. These are people who believe in a utopia of libertarianism in which they will be nothing but servants to the whims of their wealthier neighbors. They simply take up the torch and the pitchfork and march off shouting that the monster must be killed. And they have identified the monster as public education.

Thankfully, we did not simply sit on our hands and do nothing. Thankfully, we made the calls, sent the emails and letters, made the visits, attended the rallies, and garnered support from our communities to fight them off. We have won a victory for public education. But with victory there is always a price. Some of our friends and colleagues, some of those bright, shining faces that greeted us in August will not be in the classrooms next year. They have become casualties in a war against education, a war against enlightenment, a war against the very light that brings a people from slavery to exalted liberty.

For all of our successes, I will carry with me forever the pain of knowing that not everyone who started this journey in our ranks will end it there. For all the euphoria that comes with winning, I will never forget those teachers who will now leave classrooms and children’s lives empty of their particular light.

We must never forget those who fell by the wayside in a war where politics became more important than the lives of children. We must never surrender to the forces of dark ignorance that would snuff out the shining example of public education. We must never stop fighting until every single member of the Texas Legislature and every single occupant of the Executive Offices of the Texas government has an appreciation for public education.

Never give up.

Never surrender.

We are Waco TSTA/NEA. And we are public education.

Shame on the People who Represent Us in the Texas Legislature

This is an open note to Congressman Doc Anderson, Congresswoman Marva Beck, and Senator Brian Birdwell.

Shame on you. Shame on all three of you.

You have proven true to the ideals of cutting public education, which is only somewhat akin to cutting off the nose of Texas to spite its face. Once again, you have shown your unwillingness to show any sense of political courage in standing up against the madness that has seized the Texas Legislature. You may be under the belief that you are forming a smaller government, a point I cannot argue, but you are doing it in a way that will be devastating to the future of Texas business and industry. You are doing it in a way that not only destroys the lives of people who have dedicated their lives to the young people that will lead us into the future, but it runs the strong risk of ruining the ability of those children to gain the basic skills they will need to prosper, even to function, in the global economy of the 21^st century.

Congratulations on once again showing a complete and utter lack of backbone by not formulating a plan that would cut spending but still pay for the one expense absolutely necessary to the future of this State: public education.

Congratulations on putting ideology before the good of your constituents.

On Fiscal Conservatism, A Conservative Budget, Birthers, and Other Various and Tawdry Subjects

Just a few random thoughts about the news of the day.  I’ll try to keep it brief.

1.  Yes, I was elected Third Alternate to the NEA Board of Directors from Texas by my Texas State Teachers Association colleagues at the TSTA House of Delegates in El Paso a couple of weeks ago.  What that means:  basically, whenever the NEA Board of Directors meets, Texas gets 3 seats at the table.  We have 3 elected Board members.  If one of them can’t go, we send the First Alternate (the TSTA President) to maintain our 3 spots. If a spot is still open, we send the Second Alternate (the TSTA Vice President).  If there is still a spot open, we send the Third Alternate (me).  So, that’s that.

2.  Fiscal conservatives are a funny lot and often maligned in our political system.  We are often maligned (yes, I am a fiscal conservative, too; it fits in well with my mainly libertarian viewpoint on most issues) because most people don’t really get what fiscal conservatives actually believe.  That’s okay, because there are a lot of people out there calling themselves fiscal conservatives that aren’t, mainly because they don’t know what a true fiscal conservative believes either.  Basically, it’s simple.  A fiscal conservative believes that a private citizen knows better how to spend their own money than the government, but also realizes that there are certain things which the government must have money to spend on.  A fiscal conservative believes that the government attains this money through taxation.  A fiscal conservative does not believe in unnecessary taxes for unnecessary government expenditures.  One of the things that all truly democratic-republican governments in existence believe the government must provide (and therefore must pay for) is public education.  There are many other issues we can debate (welfare, health care, retirement pensions) and those are debates I’ll be happy to argue with whomever would like to, but public education is, according to Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Houston, and the Texas Constitution, publicly-funded provision number one.  If we don’t pay for that, we forfeit the right to call ourselves a democracy, because an uneducated populace can never be free.  A conservative budget is a wonderful idea and one which I fully support, but realize that we, as a free society, have certain obligations.  And funding public education is number one.

3. The birther movement…ah, the birther movement.  A bunch of people who actually believe (and yes, even after President Obama released a copy of his long-form birth certificate, they still believe it) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, Indonesia, or wherever they decide he’s really from this week.  Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if they came out soon saying he was really from a moon of Jupiter.  That’s about how much sense these people make.  He was born in Hawaii, guys.  Get over it.

4. The reaction to these people by the news media, however, is almost as entertaining as their insanities (or is it inanities).  They seem horrified by the fact that there are people out there who are uncomfortable with the fact that the President of the United States is … well … not white.  I guess in their ivory towers and pretty, rainbow-decked, kingdoms, everyone’s happy and there is no racism.  Unfortunately, we live in the real world, which is sometimes (even often maybe) dark, gritty, and dangerous, and where people hate others based simply on their race, gender, sexual orientation, and all sorts of other stupid reasons.  Reporters of the world, come out of your little cocoon and into reality.  In other words, get over it.

That’s all that’s spinning through my brain on a random Wednesday night.  I hope all of these thoughts (as dreary as that last one was) find you healthy and happy.  If you’re reading this, know that I value your readership and love you for it.

And so, in the words of an old Irish prayer, “May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and may you be in Heaven ten minutes before the Devil even knows you’re dead.”

The Power of Democracy

I was reflecting on the British forebears of our American democracy and the transition in British history from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy this past weekend. I was especially taken with how democracy became more and more important to Parliament and the subjects of the British Kings. This led me to realize the great power that we, as modern, twenty-first century Americans have. Indeed, we in public education have an even greater power than the common run of the American public.

We get to hire the people who run the “companies” we work for.

What’s more is that we get to have a say in the policies that direct those “companies”. We have a right, a duty, to direct the hands that open and close the purse-strings that direct the amount of money we make, the amount of money that gets put into making sure that EVERY child in Texas receives the lavishly-funded public education that our Texas Declaration of Independence called for and our Texas State Constitution guarantees.

Our esteemed Governor, Rick Perry, has decided that these things are not important. He seems to be of the opinion that Texas businesses will be better served by abandoning Texas school children to a lower set of standards through not funding what they need to learn the lessons they need to take them into the future. He and his cronies in Congress seem perfectly comfortable with the idea that Texas can create a true second-class of citizenship by not funding public education and assuring that only those who can afford to send their children to private schools get educations for their children.

This way, they can assure that only the rich stay rich while those who cannot afford the finder things in life are left to suffer under the yoke of wage slavery, one step above the status that brought thousands of slaves to the shores of our country centuries ago. This is the way that people in power have tried to maintain power in every monarchical society in history.

But our forefathers chose to reject that type of society. They pushed to create one in which even the poorest of the poor could rise up to accomplish great things. They wanted a land where people were free to pursue that which brought happiness. That was one of the three great necessities that Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams wrote about in their powerful Declaration.

In order to win these guarantees, they left us with the responsibility of holding our elected officials to account. Now is the time when we can do this. Now is the time when we must do this.

I know it takes strength. I know it takes fearlessness. But imagine the strength and fearlessness that you’ll be able to muster when it’s too late. Imagine how easy it will be to do this when you are facing down the barrel of the hatchet man’s cannon. Imagine how easy it will be when it’s your job on the line as 300 of our colleagues who are working under probationary contracts are experiencing right now.

It is time to be fearless. It is time to be strong.

It is time to fight for all of us.

My Thoughts on the Tea Party

Now, I know what I’m about to say will be unpopular among many of my friends in the Republican Party.  I have been persecuted for speaking these truths.  But I really am not fond of the Tea Party.

I said it, start the hate mail.

It’s not a general dislike or disagreement with their principles.  In fact, there is much in their concepts of fiscal responsibility and libertarianism that I not only appreciate, but very much agree with.  The government should not spend more than it takes in.  People’s taxes should be low to promote greater comfort in personal spending.  The government should allow companies to succeed or fail on their own merits and only step in to protect small businesses from monopolies (and, frankly, to protect American companies from foreign ones when the foreign companies are supported by foreign governments, giving them an unfair advantage).

But, there are a few things that we have to realize.  The government is compelled by constitutional fiat to provide certain services and by common sense to provide others.  Public education is an absolute must to provide if we want to see our children prepared for the basics of concerned citizenship.  Social aid programs (Social Security, Medicare, TANF) have to have support to function, so that our elderly and our indigent have the capacity to survive.  We don’t live in the jungle, so Darwinism doesn’t apply to this situation.

It’s not their fiscal conservatism that offends me.  It’s the social conservatism.

I’m an educated man and one who pays attention to what he reads.  I am a libertarian when it comes to social issues as well.  Libertarians believe that people should have individual freedom to do what they wish so long as that action does not affect the rights of another.  It is the promotion o a laissez-faire thought process.

That means that the government has no right to tell me what I watch, what I read, what I think, who I sleep with (even if my wife does), who I marry, what poisons I put into my body when it doesn’t affect anyone else.  It means that, in my home where I am not violating the rights of another human being, I must be allowed the freedom to do what I wish, whether it makes you comfortable or not.  I am not going to violate your rights as you have no right of comfort.  You have the right to express yourself, to believe, to write, read, or watch what you wish.  You don’t have the right to limit my ability to pursue those things I want to do.

The problem with the Tea Party, the very intellectual dishonesty that I can not stand, is that they say they are libertarian, their fiscal policies even suggest it, but their social policies would make me believe, think, feel, and act as they want.  It is the first step on the road to fascism.  It is the first set of freedoms denied by historical figures like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mao, and Castro.

Do I honestly believe that Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, or Rick Perry are the next Hitler?  No.  I don’t.  I figure they’re simply doing what they think is best.  I even believe that they value freedom and liberty and are not fully aware of the natural consequences of their actions.  I don’t believe they are evil.  They are simply ignorant and misguided.

And the question you have to ask yourself is:  Do you want to follow the ignorant and misguided?

Because that is where the Tea Party wants to lead the United States.

Smart Politics Requires Smart Politicians

I know.  If you're anything like me, the phrase "smart politicians" makes you shudder.  It brings up mental images of men in smoke-clouded back rooms, chomped cigars clenched firmly in their jaws, while they decide which of the candidates will be Mayor, Governor, what have you.

But that's not what I mean when I say "smart politicians".

I mean politicians that have actual intelligence.

I don't know about everybody else, even you if you're reading this, but I do know that I've looked at both major (and several minor) parties' platforms and none of them agrees completely with my personal political opinions.  I'm fully aware that these platforms are written mainly by groups of fundamentalist fanatics within the party ranks (for those of you keeping score, that's "liberal-commie-tree-hugging-yadda, yadda, yadda" for the Democrats and "fascist-vindictive-tea-partying-yadda, yadda, yadda" for the Republicans) and rarely reflect the views of the mainstream of either party.  These are people who would happily sell out their whole families in order to serve the interests of the far-right/far-left agendas they have and they are the ones creating the expressions of what the party believes, usually to the chagrin of the moderate party member who sadly shakes his/her head, often with their heads firmly planted in their hands and wonder what happened to the party they believed in and were proud to belong to.

Smart politicians are those who actually study the issues, not just what the lobbyists and their party leaders say, not just the positions THEY take, but actually look at what real issues are and decide what position they should take, what's best for their district/state/precinct and, ultimately, what's best for the country.

Some of you, those that don't know what I do for a living perhaps, may wonder what exactly I'm talking about.  The issue that is foremost on a lot of people's minds today is public education.  It is time for politicians to be intelligent, realizing that cutting public education is by far not the best idea of the day.

You can't solve present problems by destroying the future and taking away from education just makes it more difficult, even impossible, to help the adults of the future (the children of today, natch) receive the best they can.

So hold your politicians responsible.  I don't care if you are a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, or a Green.  You can even claim the Whigs or Federalists for all I care, but it's more important than ever that you reach out to the people that represent you to tell them what's important to you.  Tell them what you demand they do as part of the condition for getting to keep their jobs in 2012.

Make them be truly smart politicians and make them practice smart politics.

...And away we go.

I've never been much of a blogger even though I've been writing since I was in Junior High.  I've usually been too busy to actually sit down and write about stuff and, when I get those free moments, it's just nice to stop and look around once in a while.  But that's just because I don't want to miss it.

So, what's this thing really going to be about?

Will I express my thoughts on education?
Yes.

Ideas about improving the world?
I would think so.

Sports?
You betcha.

My feelings on pop culture and what it means to the future of our (hopefully continuing to be human) race?
Lord, yes.

And what about politics?
Oh......definitely.

Basically, this will be my journal.  It will be revealing, often sarcastic, and, hopefully, entertaining.

Today has been a good day.  Maybe we'll talk about it tomorrow.

But, then, tomorrow is another day.