Making the Grade
Thursday, 2nd June 2011Okay. First of all, I grade hard. Keep that in mind. In fact, I grade harder when I’m grading someone at least purporting to be in a position of education, and/or a grownup. Knowing that, second of all, let’s have a look at the news for today….
I just got this through a series of links starting at twitter.com [incidentally: quick rant—stop linking to your site, which has only adverts and a link to another site, which has adverts and a link to a site which might stand a chance in hell of having the thing you were pretending to be linking to; it's annoying; just link to the damned site so I can read whatever you're presuming is important to me]; it’s ostensibly a note from Nathan Bootz, Superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools, in Michigan, to Michiganian Governor Rick Snyder, possibly parsed through an open letter submitted to the Gratiot County Herald—and it goes, verbatim, like this:
Dear Governor Snyder,
In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.
One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.
Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future…by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.
Respectfully submitted,
Nathan Bootz, Superintendent, Ithaca Public Schools
Okiedokie. Let’s grade us a scholastic superintendent. Line by line.
Dear Governor Snyder,
No, no, no; when you reach mumblemutter grade, you’re likely to learn that a letter to an official—or at least a Michiganian Governor—addresses the recipient with a colon. Dear Governor Snyder: We’ll always have Paris. Okay? Let’s move on….
In these tough economic times, schools are hurting.
Granted, had we not dumped those quadrillions of dollars into building schools with nerve endings, we wouldn’t be discussing this today.
And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools?
There are those who’d disagree with me, hereafter known as idiots, but, to my thinking, any sentence, regardless the punctuation between the first word and the last, excepting in cases a colon, which ends in a questionmark, is necessarily a question in its entirety; thus, Bootz appears to be asking both yes, and whether anyone’s broke in Detroit.
Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.
Actually, I kinda watch for that in houses, run by parents; but I’m an optimist.
One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan.
How does one do a solution? I can do lunch; I can do science; I can do se do [not actually]; I don’t see a procedural method for doing solutions. Which may be why I don’t superintend any schools.
We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate.
Fun Fact: Kentucky ranks second in the number of people Michigan incarcerates.
We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union.
We also spend the most…than. Um…than is a conjunction; the preposition for which I assume you’re groping is of, making other quirky and needless. Points for declining to spell it as then, though.
Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.
Dear Governor Comma: I end sentences with prepositions; send money.
Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner.
What—as a profession?
They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.
Also, in prison, no one snitches on you for sexting.
This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison.
Wait—what?
The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding.
And equal rights. And equal expectations. And equal unemployability upon graduation.
Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights.
And yet, less than average: voting, and bearing arms.
What about the rights of youth, our future?!
Y’know: this is a fair question; I’ve asked it myself. Wanna know what the answer is? I’ll tell ya: children—minors—our emotastic future—have no rights. They can’t vote or carry guns. Rights are enjoyed only by those in the age of majority—only relatively recently including adults who are black, female, oriental, et cetera. This, incidentally, is why I oppose your cute little plan: to ameliorate minors—children under eighteen—to the criminal status of adults, while ginchy on the surface, kinda leads directly to the problem you’re about to misaddress. Kids are kids; grownups are grownups. In a perfectly consistent system, kids one day short of eighteen would all be kids—none tried as adults, none driving, none doing anything but being kids, for whom their parents exclulsively would be responsible; the next day, upon turning eighteen, the kid, ameliorating to adulthood, would be allowed to carry guns and drink and smoke and own property and vote and go to prison for being a substandard adult. So, yeah: I’m good with redefining a few terms; I’m not good with redefining them to make the whole thing yet more hypocritical and complicated.
Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner.
Fine. Here’s your cell. One roommate. No talking after dark; lights out at nine. Failure to comply unquestioningly with all orders will result in solitary confinement and/or a new trial to add more time to your sentence; you’ve got eighty bucks a month to spend on sundries and not a penny more; and so on. You want the rights of a prisoner? You got it. They’re attached to the responsibilities of a prisoner.
It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future…by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.
By, you know, making prison redundant.
Respectfully submitted,
Also redundant: we know it’s submitted; you can just go with respectfully—though I suspect you don’t mean it, lacking colons.
Nathan Bootz, Superintendent, Ithaca Public Schools
Nathan Bootz. Employed as a superintendent. Also employed as an Ithaca Public Schools. Which feels pain. And which can’t use anything on the keyboard but letters, numbers, and commas.
Toldya I grade hard.
Not that I’m missing the overall point—that children are our future and rarely is the question asked is they learning and whatever else this illiterate fascist was trying to convey. I was just saving the worst for last.
Look. Here’s the actual problem with the educational system, in its simplest form: the educational system exists. It’s a literally retarded nineteenth century agrarian businessmodel based on summers off to harvest; standardised testing to make all solutions simple, plausible, and wrong; taxation upon childless homeowners [Can we start taxing parents to funnel some cash back to guys without kids so they can go buy chickmagnet cars and procreate? It's good for the future, you see.]; coursework by committees of underqualified churchian and political lunatic fringes; intolerable fecklessness in teachers unlikely to be replaced by better ones should we increase the standard salary in a world of equal opportunity litigation; and I think those rubbery rectangular pizza things are still only on Fridays. This is not the résumé of a system which should be asking for a raise.
We could debate that, but we’re not going to. Let’s move on to another point you unfortunately brought up.
You know what schools aren’t? Never were? Have never been credibly expected to be? Parents. Your psychotic belief that a school, funded or otherwise, is meant to replace a parent or two is insulting and ridiculous. Look: I get it; it’s tough to raise a kid or seventeen in a nation financially weird enough that both parents need jobs, in a culture with a divorce rate potentially higher than its mortality rate; it’s tragic and sad; it’s also reality, which doesn’t cave in to policy.
Know why I haven’t got kids? Three reasons.
One: Don’t want’em. I’m perfectly happy being the only kid in my house. Every toy under this roof belongs to me. Because I designed it that way. Children are your future, not mine.
Two: It leads to drooling imbeciles assuring me that, having no children of my own, I can’t have an objective opinion about anything, which leads to entries into this site, which leads to getting paid. There’s order in the universe after all.
Three: ‘If you wait until you can afford to raise a child, you’ll never have one.’ Considered; accepted: I’m good with it.
Technically, I could afford to raise a kid or two. I guess. Probably, I’d even be relatively good at it, provided no one of the calibre to demand that students be metamorphosed into convicts saw how I did it. But it’s really just not my thing. Yet. I keep hearing that, when I grow up, I’ll change my mind. Pfft.
But it does call a simple mathematical issue into question. Economy. Of cash; of time; of resources. Wanna see a not so strawmanny conversation about this? Let’s go:
Schools should raise my kids; I haven’t got the time.
Make time.
Oh, so I should just quit my job; is that it?
Yeah.
And then what do I do for money.
Lose the kid; get a job.
You can’t force me to do that; I have every right to raise my child!
Go ahead.
When! I’m always at work!
So quit.
You can’t tell me to do that; I have every right to—
Nope: you have no right to a job; you have the slogany right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness; you don’t have a delineated right to the happiness itself, or to the job kicking you the cash to go after the happiness, or a hell of a lot more than prisoners and children have.
You want cold and realistic? Wait until you can afford to raise a kid. If that day never comes, then great: whatever’s darwinistically wrong with you will die with you. People who can afford to raise kids, because they have the skills to get a job which pays enough to support a spouse and 2.4 larvae, can have kids. In fact…remind me where your right to have a kid at all is written into the constitution; I don’t remember seeing that one. You can say stupid things; you can stop saying stupid things; you can have a gun and a jury and a lawyer. I’m not seeing Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of puppysqueezing every ten months. Are you?
Which of course quickly makes this whole thing political, allowing us to debate whether parents should be licensed, taking into consideration the parents’ longterm ability to throw their offspring into private schools while covering rent and food. But, valid though that scenario might objectively be, I get that no one’s gonna go for it—not in the majority, anyway. It would just lead to more conspiratards whimpering that only the corporate elite can afford to have kids, thusly guaranteeing a larger void per generation between the rich and the poor…though it would have that novel advantage of being actually true.
So, we’ll let that go. For now. We’ll take it as read that anyone can have a kid, up until the moment at which Child Services rips it outta the house because people lacking the skills to make more than seven bucks an hour stand a decent chance of lacking the skills also to make dinner.
In fact, let’s just forget the whole thing. I know what I need to know: that, as evil elite juggernaut CEO of Wasted, Inc., I won’t be hiring anyone with a diploma from the Ithacan Public School District; something’s just not right with their schoolboard.
Of course, that’s just my opinion; it’s this sorta solution I do.