Bubba, Education and The Global Village

As anyone associated with public education knows, the prevailing winds pushing public school funding are not very favorable; we’re heading towards the rocks, and there doesn’t seem to be any help in sight. In late June early July, 2005, the news from Wisconsin highlighted the plight of the folks up in Florence County, located in the extreme northern reaches of the state. For the third time, the voters refused to fund the county school system, forcing the school board decision in mid July to close the schools down and bus the 850* plus youngsters some 30 to 35 miles away to nearby schools.

Why did the voters reject the school referendums three times? Fortunately, we don’t have to guess; an area TV reported asked Bubba, a disheveled looking voter standing in front of one of the closed schools, that very question, and Bubba quite obligingly replied, “Heck, all ya gotta do is look at that place to know they’s wastin’ our money. Shoot, they can do a lot more with less. At’s the way I see it. I got to make it on what little I got. Got no choice! Hell, I ain’t seen no raise m’self in a month of Sundays. Them damned schools ain’t no different ‘en the rest of us, septin’ maybe, some of ‘em pointy headed folks thinks they’s just a little bit smarter ‘n the rest of us. Well, I guess you could say they found out they ain’t so special after all; we showed ‘em,” and with that pronouncement, he cut loose with a chuckle that seemed to come from deep down within. . . as he stood chuckling, enjoying the moment, the big fella’s belly shook like a bowl of jello.

The situation in Florence county highlights a problem facing school districts all over the state of Wisconsin and in fact in many other states as well. California, for example, once the epitome of educational excellence on just about any index of educational quality you wanted to look at, now sits at or near the bottom of the fifty state pile, a broken, bankrupt system, looking up at Mississippi and several other traditionally bottom rung states that have never invested in public sector institutions: schools, museums, the arts, public parks, and public libraries. You name it, they haven’t supported it.

The general malaise afflicting public school education, or even more broadly public institutions, is a bit more complicated than Bubba’s simple minded view that “schools can do more with less,” but it is associated with that view point. The implications of the general public’s myopic understanding of education, including Bubba’s, must be viewed in the context of the larger social picture that includes the global community of which we are inextricably involved. How we as a society value education does make a difference in our lives, and will play a role in determining what kind of a future we and our children will enjoy in this global village. In looking at the difficulties facing public institutes, notably education at every level, it’s important to note, what may be obvious, they did not emerge ex nihilo suddenly last night.

Becoming prominent with Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America and the ascendency of conservative politics in the mid Nineties, successful political candidates of almost every stripe have repeated the tax cutting mantra at the heart of Newt’s contract ad nauseam, and right there beside the tax mantra is it’s corollary: less government is better government. Certainly, that message became apparent in California with the Jarvis ballot measures that transformed public education into a bulls eye on election day, starting with proposition 13 in 1978. In any case, whether with the Jarvis proposition campaigns in California, or in any home town in any state in the USA, politicians with the simple minded bromides have spent the last 25 years routinely reducing the complexities of this world to simplistic distortions that the ill-informed Bubba’s could latched on to. “Got a problem, cut Taxes! “ And government, the politicians noted, taking a simplistic note from President Regan’s book, “It’s the problem not the solution.” To be sure, politicians are not engaged in self-delusion; they know Bubba’s a sucker for the superficial pablum they obligingly dish out. Public sector employees are not public servants in this world view, they’ve become people with targets on their backs feeding at the public trough; in sum, the public sector employee is painted as an unnecessary cancer that must be eliminated.

The public sector criticism comes with the concomitant notion that if private sector organizations operated as inefficiently, as their public sector counter parts, they couldn’t function. Notions of private sector efficiency and basic superiority, vis a vie the public sector, rib much campaign rhetoric in the form of expressions like, “I’ve had to meet a payroll, I know what it means to manage and run a business.” Both Bushes, dad and son, made similar claims on their road to the White House. The implication embedded in this rhetoric is clear; public sector institutions are populated by profligate spending dead beats who couldn’t make it in the private sector. Of course, to buy into the axiomatic superiority of private sector organizations, as many people have, is patently ludicrous; one has to ignore too much history to buy into such nonsense; i.e., the demise of: the rail system in America, the steel industry, the auto industry, the expensive, broken health care system a system that leaves the US population behind Canada and all of the western European democracies in terms of infant mortality, life expectancy etc. and at roughly twice the cost being paid by those Western democracies. That's right! We pay twice as much, as do the other Western Democracies, for far less health care. It is also important to keep in mind that the private sector screw ups didn’t start with the criminality associated with the corporate reprobates such as Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Tyco or the savings and loan fiasco of the Regan years; sadly, the list is too long to mention in its entirety. Notwithstanding right-wing political claims to the contrary, one looks in vain for public sector mismanagement that looks anything like the private sector boondoggles. Just to put it into some perspective, the savings and loan bailout cost American tax payers more than every war this nation has fought from the Revolutionary War down through the war in Viet Nam. . .that calculation includes two world wars and Korea, not to mention numerous smaller belligerent entanglements.

The highly orchestrated reactionary attack on America’s public institutions, an attack that is reflected in the defeated school referendums and the tax cutting basic to the view that all units of government can do more with less; it’s a view that weakens America’s social fabric; it is not the product of mere chance circumstances. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a some time Gingerich sycophant, retired from his House Leadership position to help lead the charge. Armey currently Co- Chariman of Freedom Works an organization he helped found, works tirelessly around the country with some 360,000 members, who in Armey’s words, “Works for lower taxes, less government, and more freedom.” (Testimony before the House Budget Committee October 6, 2004). In fact Amey’s followers help state and local political action groups develop anti-tax initiatives. This, incidently, is the same Dick Armey who said on the House floor, “Yes, I am Dick Armey, and if there was a “dick army,” Barney Frank would want to join up.” To be sure the Congressman’s mother chose an apt name for her son, "dick!"

Parenthetically, the gross, crude remarks that come from many of these “moral,” “Christian” folks, including Vice President Cheney, is nothing short of scandalous, especially given the public manner in which they display their religious sentiments on a brightly lite Las Vegas style neon marquee; you’re never left wondering about how Christian they are; they’ll tell you, just be patient. To be sure these right-wing/Christians aren’t perfect; they just expect perfection in everybody else. I guess the knowledge that they’re “saved” is liberating in the sense that they are not bounded by moral strictures requiring basic integrity or personal honesty. In the contest between God and mammon, God’s on the losing side.

Indeed, the general tenor and moral tone of much of their political advocacy violates most common place notions of decency and honesty. The fictional “grass roots” organizations they create by the dozens to advocate for a position that is usually inimical to the position actually supported by the real grass roots groups is, yet, another case in point. Art Linkletter, and others like him, commonly functions as a shills for groups that have no relationship to the grass roots organizations their names suggest; no more, that is, than the Astro Truf in Houston’s Astro Dome has to real grass. For example, the pharmaceutical industry funded ads supporting President Bush’s prescription drug plan under the guise of an astro truf seniors group; the message presented by those ads was inimical to the interests of the genuine grass roots senior groups who actually opposed the plan. In sum, decency and honesty are not part of the slime ball Atwater-Rove-Bush school of politics, and that is reflected in current polls; the people think President Bush is dishonest (poll results available in all mainstream media 5 August 2005).

As noted earlier, how we as a society value education does make a difference in our lives, and will play role in determining what kind of a future we and our children will enjoy. The decisions the Bubba’s of this world make at the ballet box do have consequences. Importantly, due to pressure from Right-wing anti-tax groups, many states have modified school funding laws making it necessary for schools to put even the most basic operational needs before the voters on election day. Because only a relatively small percentage of those eligible to vote have children actively enrolled in school, each ballot measure faces a tough test on election day, and as the record shows, quite commonly go down in defeat. To be sure, not every school district has faced the plight of those folks in Wisconsin’s Florence county, but make no mistake about it, with each passing year buildings are going unrepaired, positions and programs are being eliminated, professional educators are struggling to keep their heads above the water being polluted by the anti-tax crowd, and poor old Bubba, well, the Wisconsin Education Association has been telling him now for several years now “that every kid needs a great school,” but he ain’t buyin’ it. That message is too remote, too abstract, too meaningless. Indeed, it even offends some of the Bubbas out there. As long as there’s a school, that’s good enough for Bubba even if it means a 35 mile bus ride twice a day.

These anti-tax campaigns do have broad consequences that extend far beyond the world of local school district referendums. Ironically, Virginia Senator George Allen unwittingly touched upon one consequence recently in a speech delivered before a New Hampshire Republican woman’s group (C-span broadcast 2005). Among other things, Senator Allen noted how pathetically few engineers, math and science types generally are being graduated by our American colleges and universities. In sharp contrast he noted, as others have, that the Chinese are graduating ten times as many engineers and ten times as many graduates in the basic sciences as US colleges and universities are. Senator Allen also stated that India is also cranking out engineers and scientists at a rate that dwarfs what’s happening in the USA. Keep in mind that China and India both represent developing economies, not nearly as developed as our own, but given the national priorities they’ve established, they will quickly become major players on the world stage.

At a time when those associated with tax lobbies are doing their level
best to hack public education to pieces (ostensibly for the purpose of making our economy, our society stronger, more vibrant,) tiny little Ireland has opened the financial flood gates for education. . . . ..it's free, and as a result they're reaping the benefits that accrues to a highly educated society.
As Thomas L. Friedman wrote recently (The New York Times June 29, 2005), “Ireland today is the richest country in the European Union after Luxembourg.” Most American think of poor little Ireland the home of the potato famine not as the home of one of Europe’s wealthiest, healthiest societies. How did they do it? They’ve provided national health care for their citizenry and have developed a first class, free educational system that includes the university system.

“The results,” notes Friedman, “ are phenomenal. Today, 9 out of 10 of the world's top pharmaceutical companies have operations here, as do 16 of the top 20 medical device companies and 7 out of the top 10 software designers. Last year, Ireland got more foreign direct investment from America than from China. And overall government tax receipts are way up.”

In an e-mail exchange with Friedman, Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers stated, "We set up in Ireland in 1990, What attracted us? [A] well-educated work force -and good universities close by." Friedman concluded what seems rather apparent, “Make high school and university education free.”

The Irish example is but one recent example of the important role education plays in a nations economic order. Recently here in the US several Southern states were involved in competition with each other to attract another Toyota manufacturing plant. They reportedly offered Toyota 100's of millions of dollars in incentives of one kind or another but all for not; Toyota elected to build in Ontario, Canada instead. . Why? Toyota stated that the decision was made because of the high quality Canadian work force and the national health insurance system that supports that force (See Princeton Economist Paul Krugman’s July 25 piece in the NY Times for a more detailed discussion of the Toyota decision). Sadly enough, according to Paul Krugman, “the president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association. . . claimed that the educational level in the Southern United States was so low that trainers for Japanese plants in Alabama had to use "pictorials" to teach some illiterate workers how to use high-tech equipment.”

The narrow minded, myopic vision many votes reflect when they cast their ballots on election day does have consequences. “There's some bitter irony here for Alabama's governor, ” wrote Krugman, “ Just two years ago voters overwhelmingly rejected his plea for an increase in the state's rock-bottom taxes on the affluent, so that he could afford to improve the state's low-quality education system. Opponents of the tax hike convinced voters that it would cost the state jobs.”

In sum, those of us who really care about the future must be willing to engage the Bubba’s of this world in a dialog that relates his self-interest to the complexities of living in the dawning new world order. China, India, Europe, Japan, they are an important part of the emerging global village. The abstract, largely irrelevant “Every Kid Deserves a Great School” campaign funded by the Wisconsin Education Association just doesn’t get the job done. Bubba needs to know why great schools are important in his life even though statistically he probably does not have children enrolled in the schools. The people in Alabama who have listened to the anti-tax crowd are paying a big price. The politicians selling snake oil don’t have the answers.

* The news reports presenting the number of Florence County students effected by the school closing varried from a low of 650 to a high of 850.

Ever on the lookout for ya,

Davy Crockett