End #OklaEd

We’ve been going about this all wrong. 

End1Oklahoma’s political leadership is NOT going to support public education. There won’t be increases to funding, or teacher raises of any real substance. Legislation in the next decade will be just like legislation in the past decade – more limits, more measuring, more changing the rules as often as possible. More hostility, more red tape, more blame piled on schools for spending so much time and energy on that exact same red tape. 

Why fight it anymore?

It’s not like it matters if we get 60%, 70%, even 80% of the public behind us. Calls to legis concerning ESAs were something like 4-to-1 against and it still went through committee. Once the Blaine Amendment is repealed and the State Constitution changed so that the OK Supreme Court can no longer declare anything unconstitutional, it’s pretty much over anyway. 

And yet we keep burning up those keyboards and spiking that blood pressure to accomplish… what? 

Not much. 

Thus my opening realization. We’ve been going about this all wrong.

Maybe they’re right.

End2Maybe private schools ARE better at everything. There are certainly a number of very impressive institutions around the Tulsa area, and I assume the same thing is true over in OKC.

Maybe choice IS good. Maybe competition spurs excellence, just like with fast food chains or cable television programming. Maybe we’ve been fighting to keep education stuck in the 20th century, and it’s time to move into the 19th.

Maybe vouchers DO actually save money – parents get their 80% of current per-student allocation and the rest is magical gravy. According to those unending ESA talking points, the more kids who leave public schooling, the better off the remaining children ARE as a result! How exciting!

And here we are, blogging and fussing and kicking and screaming to prevent that kind of progress. Progress that will make so many legislators happy. Progress that will save the state SO much money.

Progress that will be SO good for ALL of the children. 

Why keep public schools at all?

School ChoiceAssuming our elected leadership has the slightest idea what they’re talking about, any child stuck in a public school is being undereducated and underserved. Parents who CARE take their child and their edu-gift card and shop for something better. Parents who don’t… well, their kid is stuck in all of these sucky schools staffed by whiney unionized teachers and bloated administrations who won’t even voluntarily consolidate. 

So let’s do what’s best for ALL kids. Let’s end public schooling altogether. 

Every student’s family will have receive an immediate voucher to spend at a much better school of their choice. Religious, secular, big, small – whatever. The free market is god, after all.  

Granted, this could be a bit disruptive in the short term, but I have no doubt that the power of capitalism will overcome all difficulties. Religious institutions of all varieties will step up to claim their share – evangelical churches as well as more orthodox denominations, Catholics as well as Jews. The Islamic community will certainly be ready with top quality options quicker than most, and the Buddhists will presumably make less fuss than, well… anyone. 

And remember those zany atheists who wanted to build that devil bench on the capitol grounds next to the Ten Commandments? They’ll JUMP at the chance to have their own SCHOOL! Their science scores will be AMAZING!

End4Businesses of all sorts are welcome as well. Pearson, Holt-McDougal, and any number of Computer Bank Academies – probably the most cost-effective of the bunch. They’ll take all comers without fear or filters, knowing that one of their own primary arguments for ESAs is that private schools succeed because of FREEDOM. The kind of freedom which we’ll finally let ring, unshackled by the expectations and accountability previously crippling public schools. 

I’m sure there will be some growing pains for the first few weeks, but the important thing is that we’re finally making progress as a state – for the children. Individualized instruction. Choice. Excellence through capitalism – all while saving the state millions. 

I confess I’m not entirely sure who’s most likely to pick up the substantial number of students whose parents aren’t overly active in helping make such decisions. I’m curious what new strategies we’ll see in play to accomodate students well below grade level or manifesting emotional or behavioral issues.

It’s called “the invisible hand,” after all, because there’s no telling what unexpected wonders will unfold among the highest needs populations, or transient students, or kids on IEPs, or anyone who’s not white or Asian. I honestly can’t imagine…

End5But I guess that’s the same sort of uncertainty regarding market forces that’s been making me part of the problem rather than part of the solution, isn’t it? I need to let that go and believe (hashtag trustfall).

Of course, not everyone will so easily accept that we’d be willing to make this sacrifice. They’ll want to do things gradually, burdened by compromises and half-steps. We may hear voices not known for defending public ed extolling the essential role it’s always played and lamenting its loss – that’s what you do at funerals, after all. 

That’s why the onus is on US to do what’s RIGHT, whatever equivocating our political leadership suddenly manifests. This is where #oklaed, so proud of doing what’s best for KIDS rather than what’s convenient for US, must step up. No fear, no hesitation, no selfish second-thoughts.

We’ll all quit. 

Together, at once. Every classroom teacher, bus driver, librarian, nurse, counselor, janitor, cafeteria lady, building principal, district secretary, all the way up to those way-too-many district superintendents, everywhere in the state. We leave for Spring Break as scheduled, and announce that no one – not one single educator – will be returning.

end6This isn’t a strike. We don’t WANT anything for ourselves. There are no demands. We’re doing this for the children, so they can be free. We’re sacrificing our stubborn, unionized, lower-end-of-A-F ways and humbly confessing that we were wrong – state leadership is right

The kids will be better off this way – so get those vouchers cranking. 

Sure, a handful of us will end up working for the various private schools taking our place. Many will go out-of-state where we’d be already, if we had any self-respect at all. 

And yet… it won’t be easy for most, such a big change in such a short time frame. But setting aside our own wants and needs to do what’s best for children is kinda what we do. Surely you’ve noticed our collective martyr complex?

The dramatic improvement across the range of students – from the pastiest engineering lad with awkward speech patterns to the most impoverished student of color in the heart of the city – will make it worth a little discomfort and a few years of Republican smugness as they save the future once again. 

You might assume I’m using hyperbole, or trying to make a sarcastic point, but I’m totally not. Not this time. 

TEAMStart talking to your coworkers, superiors, and parents NOW. This has to be ALL or NOTHING.

I understand your hesitation. It’s terrifying. Huge. Many of you aren’t sure what you’ll even do if you’re not holding back the children with your unionized antediluvianism.

Stop being so selfish! Smarter, more caring people than you are TRYING to let children have CHOICE, and a BETTER EDUCATION! Get out of their way!

All the way out of their way. And let’s see what happens.

A Chance In Oklahoma, Part II

Helen Churchill CandeeI may have mentioned how giddy I was to come across a wonderful piece by Helen Churchill Condee in Harper’s Weekly, from way back on February 23, 1901. When you combine insight, knowledge, and pithy writing, you have my heart forever.

Even if you’re long-dead, I suppose.

Condee is actually Helen Churchill Candee, but from time to time the ‘a’ becomes an ‘o’ in her writing credits. (I kept the ‘wrong’ spelling with the document since that’s how it appeared in Harper’s originally.)

Helen was a New York girl who grew up in Connecticut, eventually marrying a successful but abusive man. After their separation, she began writing articles for several ladies’ magazines to support herself and her two children.

Women’s magazines in the late 19th century tended to focus on household tips, womanly etiquette, and taking care of your man, but over time she went a bit Hillary Rodham and wandered into women’s rights, raising children, and even local politics. 

Give them a pen and a paycheck, and it’s all over, boys. 

Harpers1901Candee moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma, for several years, writing regularly for periodicals back east. It was around this time she published her first two books – How Women May Earn A Living and An Oklahoma Romance. The first became a landmark in women’s literature (a subject for another time) and the second – her only work of fiction out of the many successful books she’d continue to write – helped publicize and glorify life in the recently opened territory. 

It may have been based on personal shenanigans as well, but it used to be a lady didn’t come out and confess such things, so…

Somewhere in the midst of this she wrote the piece with which I’m so enamored, along with numerous others I’m currently tracking down. 

She went on to become an expert on world travel and, um… tapestries… and served as a volunteer nurse in the Great War overseas. She passed just short of her 91st birthday in 1949. 

The event for which she’s most remembered is not one directly related to her writing, however glorious. She was on the Titanic when it sank on April 15, 1912. Her written recollections are some of the most memorable and quoted of various survivor accounts, and her unpublished memoirs seem to have inspired a few of the key scenes in that DiCaprio film some of you may recall. 

HCC Titanic

There was this younger man, see, and a love triangle, and this glorious epiphany standing on the bow…

None of which, in my humble opinion, compare to the glory of her account of opening the Unassigned Lands in O.T.  I mean, that flashy stuff is all fine and well, but anyone can break their ankle leaping onto a lifeboat. Few can capture so much humanity in so few words as a passage like this:

The lands about to be opened are some that have long been coveted by the white men. Greed of land grows on those who hold it.

Oooohhhh… do you feel the truth tickling your innards? I sure do. 

The Wichita Mountains have long been like the promised land to the people of the Southwest, and as a rider reaches a hill-top of the rolling prairie, he exclaims, with extended arms: “See! That’s the Wichita range!  Beautiful mountains, and they say they’re full of gold and silver, copper and zinc, with some outcroppings of coal and traces of oil.” 

‘Full of gold and silver’ might have been a bit optimistic, but copper and zinc was spot on. Can’t believe she didn’t work in something poetic about lead as well. Hello!

Ironically, it would be coal and oil – here almost afterthoughts – which would soon thereafter drive the mineral boom in Oklahoma.

But not yet. 

Pres HarrisonAt that moment, it was still all about land – farming, growing, raising, living land. And this was it. Everything else was pretty much taken. The bar was closing and the men outnumbered the women 3 to 1. Time to make your play. 

And so, to get these lands, a bill was formed, but it stuck in the process at Washington. Then one day, as a surf-boat rolls safely up the beach on a big comber, the bill went through as a “rider” on a greater bill, and the opening of the new lands was made a certainty. 

If there’s one thing that resonates with Oklahomans, it’s a good boating metaphor. Must be a Northeasterner thing.

And imagine a time period in which major acts of Congress were unable to get passed the traditional way, so they were stuck onto completely unrelated legislation no one could afford to vote against and passed without some even realizing what they were supporting!

Back in the day, I mean. Long, long ago.  

Surveyors have been all over their surface now, and it is marked off into a checker-board of squares miles, each one containing four farms of one hundred and sixty acres – or a quarter-section, after the manner of the West.

Homestead Act SignThe allotment size was consistent with the Homestead Act from way back in 1862, signed by Lincoln during the Civil War. This was considered a sufficient spread to allow a homestead and plenty of planting land. A free man working without modern equipment would be unlikely to cultivate more than this productively. 

It was this same Homestead Act which the ‘boomers’ had repeatedly referenced as evidence they deserved a shot at the ‘surplus’ lands in Indian Territory. 

The size of the Kiowa and Comanche tract is 2,968,893 acres. This, as the merchants say, is gross: the net number of farms which are offered to those who wish to make a hazard for new fortunes is about 10,000 of a quarter-section each. That means the redemption of ten thousand men, their fortune assured if they are made of the stuff that can labor and struggle for two or three initial years.

Redemption. That’s what it was all about for many. 

Three-quarters of a century before, Mexican Texas had been the land of new beginning – escaping your own past, whether it meant legal entanglements, failed relationships, or political embarrassment, and starting anew in a seemingly unlimited Eden. The glories of Manifest Destiny had carried others to California, Oregon, and gradually filled in even much of the Great Plains.

Now the frontier was ‘closed’, or at least not nearly as frontier-ish as it had been, and hungry homesteading eyes turned to Oklahoma.

Middle Ages TapestryHow many others in that generation and prior had taken their shots, staked their claims, virtually everywhere else in the West? Those waiting now were the also-rans, the coulda-beens, desperate for one last chance at stepping into the role of Yeoman Farmer in the most democratic manifestation of the ideal. Redemption? Maybe so. 

‘Their fortune assured’? The American Dream was immutable law still at this late date. Perhaps some of this faith was galvanized by desperation, but it guided both policy and personal choices well into the 20th century.

It won’t last – at least not in the same form. The Dust Bowl and Great Depression would contradict all holy truths about hard work and good choices leading to independence and relative prosperity. But not yet.

They still believed.

The remaining acres of the reservation, amounting to nearly half, are disposed of in a way which treats considerately both Indian and white settler. Each of the 2,900 Indians is to have an allotment of one hundred and sixty acres, and these Indians are to choose themselves before the gates of the country are opened for the rush. In addition, 480,000 acres are allowed for Indian pasture. Fort Sill has a front lawn and back yard of 60,000 acres out of the tract, and about three hundred and thirty thousand acres make up the amount of land set aside for the support of schools and colleges. This disposes of the Kiowa and Comanche country.

‘Disposes’ is right. The issue of land allotment among the tribes deserves a separate post. It is difficult for Anglo minds to fully process why this was effectively the final wave of cultural genocide. “Oh my god – they gave the Indians title to their own property! How horrible!”

Yeah, yeah, white boy. Your culture is awesome, Indians were stupid, you were doing them a favor, blah blah blah. More on that next time. 

Note, that ‘these Indians’ get to ‘choose themselves’ before everyone else – almost like it’s an unfair advantage of some sort. Hey – what can go wrong when you have a choice?

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“It’s the Stay Put Landalot Man.”

Everything is now in readiness, and awaits the proclamation of the President, which is to declare the gates open, and which will say in effect, “Run in, my children, and help yourselves, but remember that only one grab is allowed for each.”

*pause*

Cynical as I am, I’m not entirely immune from the gilded glory inherent in a good land run. Condee gives me chills with this one. 

Then reality comes back.

RELATED POST: A Chance In Oklahoma, Part I

RELATED POSTS: 40 Credits & A Mule, Parts I – VII

RELATED POSTS: Boomers & Sooners, Parts I – V

A Chance In Oklahoma, Part I

Waiting To Run

There are times I just get GIDDY over a good document. (Yes, my life is that lame.) Imagine my euphoria, then, when I came across this enticing missive from Helen Churchill Condee published in Harper’s Weekly, February 23, 1901…

Not all of us are successful in life; possibly this is because we have not had a fair chance. The government of these United States, while it is looked upon as a cold, unapproachable body, like a corporation, once conceived the beneficent plan of giving a chance for success to any of its sons who chose to take it. 

What a rich framing of the initial land runs in Oklahoma – “a beneficent plan of giving a chance for success to any of its sons who chose to take it.”

I could spend a week on that sentence. Beneficent? Really? I thought the Boomers and others raised such a fuss the powers-that-be finally caved.

Look at the nuance in ‘chance’ for success (kinda like the right to ‘pursue’ happiness) for any ‘sons’ (it was still a man’s world, in law and on paper at least) who ‘chose to take it’. The American Dream may have evolved since the days of Horatio Alger (think Little Orphan Annie as a dude, or Oliver Twist without the British accent), but the ‘live right, dare big, work hard’ ethic of such tales still drove expansion and those willing to migrate into opportunity. 

In pursuance of this plan a tract of land containing about three million acres was thrown open in the middle of the Indian Territory, and every one was at liberty to take possession of one hundred and sixty acres without price. This was the beginning of Oklahoma, a Territory with a romantic and marvelous history of prosperity crowded into the short time of eleven years… 

This is the chance Uncle Sam is to give his unsuccessful sons and certain of his daughters.

Oklahoma Land Openings

When was the last time you thought of Oklahoma as a land ‘with a romantic and marvelous history of prosperity’? And this was almost a decade before the oil boom! But Condee was right – our little state-to-be had become the last great hope for white homesteading anywhere on the continent. 

Which, you know, was exciting for white homesteaders, at least…

The new tract is the reservation of the Kiowa and Comanche Indians, with the possibility of the inclusion of the Wichita lands. It is not easy to decide on the justice of the question so far as the original owner, the Indian, is concerned. 

Those who live far from him look with disapproval on the gradual crowding into smaller and yet smaller space, of the taking away of his hunting-grounds and giving him the beef issue, of beggaring him by way of forcing civilization, of breaking even the treaties sworn to hold “as long as grass grows and water runs.” 

It’s easy to forget in retrospect that many of the same complexities we recognize in history were being wrestled with as current events. Condee pairs land allotment – the most recent process by which Amerindians had been stripped of their land – with the food allotments arranged by the same treaties. Which was more destructive, she seems to suggest – taking away the source of their own culture and self-provision, or maneuvering them into reliance on the outstretched whims of federal government?

As to ‘beggaring him by way of forcing civilization’ – I… I’m simply too aquiver to even analyze that one effectively.

Arapaho Youngsters 

The U.S. picked a largely unjust war with Mexico, to be sure, but at least at some point war was declared, whatever the pretext. The vast majority of Amerindians were ethnically cleansed through handshakes and smiles and warmest assurances. The 19th century saw the U.S. perfect the art of stabbing you in the back for your own good, then resenting the few shoddy bandages it felt compelled to throw your way.

Or am I reading too much into seven words?

Those who live near the reservations see the Indian through different eyes. They regard him as a lazy, opulent child of fortune, possessing fertile lands, which lie fallow, himself rich through the simplicity of his needs and his share of the interest on the $43,000,000 which the government holds invested for his tribes. 

There’s a whole separate post to be written about paper wealth and Amerindians. Most of the wilder tales involve oil money, but the dynamic here is similar – ‘lazy’ and ‘opulent’ sets a nice tension, and surely Condee recognized the cruel irony inherent in ‘child of fortune’. 

The idea of untapped resources – especially LAND – was anathema to the white way of thinking. For the last generation of homesteaders all too aware their opportunities were quickly vanishing, it only fueled their resentment to see it ‘going to waste’.

And how much do you love Condee’s subtle rhetoric – ‘rich through the simplicity of his needs’ flowing almost as an afterthought into ‘and the interest on the $$$…’?

It angers a man who tills every acre of his quarter-section with unfailing industry to place his family above want to see his Indian neighbor, with boundless lands, cultivating but a tiny patch of corn, yet living in a cabin, keeping cattle, and driving off contentedly to receive from the government agent the issue of groceries and beef which the white man can only get in return for hard-earned dollars. 

Treaty Negotiations

Condee would have made a great historian. (She actually did just about everything BUT that – she’s a story in and of herself.) Kudos to the white lady from the North who’s so able to put the reader into such a variety of other mindsets while maintaining her own narrative voice to hold it together. 

Without the perspective lent by distance, the envious fail to see that the Indian’s rations are only a crumb of the just return he should be entitled to for evacuating all the continent except a few little reservations; and the white man covets. He does it so ingeniously, too, that its results work like logical morality, and crimes are committed under the excuse of civilizing the Indian.

‘Its results work like logical morality’ – Oh. My. God. Can you excuse me? I need a moment alone.

How easily we vainly assumed that kind of insight can only come in retrospect, with the benefit of distance and the perspective it allows. But at least one pithy babe was unraveling the human condition contemporaneously. 

The lands about to be opened are some that have long been coveted by the white men. Greed of land grows on those who hold it. 

But perhaps more on those who don’t. 

I can’t help myself. We’ll have to continue this one – and talk a little more about Helen Churchill Condee. I’m still giddy – aren’t you?

OK Land Run

RELATED POST: A Chance In Oklahoma, Part II

RELATED POSTS: 40 Credits & A Mule, Parts I – VII

RELATED POSTS: Boomers & Sooners, Parts I – V

Don’t Worry – I Have A Plan #OklaEd

#oklaed

In an #OklaEd chat a week or so ago, we were challenged by @Coach57 to not merely complain about state legislation and legislatures, but to suggest specific solutions.

Fair enough.

I confess my cynicism does tend to get me stuck attacking nonsense rather than offering alternatives. History teaches many lessons, but few are more clear or consistent than this: it’s almost always much, MUCH easier to get people united AGAINST something than it is to reach consensus over what to be FOR. 

The thing is, I’m not convinced a majority of state legislatures actually want solutions to improve public education. Some seem quite determined to destroy it altogether – presumably in service to whatever private corruption they wish to install in its place. The rest merely pander to an ill-informed constituency with destructive platitudes and bad ideas marinated in shoddy rhetoric. 

None of which negates Coach’s point. So here’s my plan for Oklahoma Public Education. 

Districts decide what courses they’ll offer, how they’ll teach, and what’s required to graduate. They’re free to offer different types of diplomas, use traditional grading or not, or reinvent the idea of school altogether. 

I can hear the heads exploding already. Stay with me – it’s not as anarchic as it sounds.  

Each district would be part of a collective, a team of mutually accountable districts not necessarily scattered equally across the state, but also not packed together by region. We’d need a pretentious name for these – something that’s not entirely accurate but makes an offensively cheesy acronym. 

Each collective would be composed of 12 – 20 districts, a mix of large and small, urban and rural. Representatives from these districts would meet periodically – at least several times a year – to share ideas, successes, and failures (also known as ‘learning experiences’), AND to hold one another mutually accountable. 

Each district must secure the approval of its collective for its proposed curriculum and standards, however traditional or non-traditional they may be. The collective can grant ‘pilot’ status to ideas outside the norm, and set a period of time during which these ideas can be tried and assessed – probably a few years. They may also serve in an advisory/supportive capacity – fresh eyes from outside, as it were. 

Travel expenses and time investment would be offset by the elimination of most state compliance requirements. I can’t remember half of the bureaucratic crap districts have to crank out every month, but @OKEducation used to do lists from time to time – he could probably fill in some specifics. 

The representatives from each district should be at or near superintendent level, perhaps with a curriculum person as cohort. We don’t want this to be a symbolic exercise in cranking out the same old magniloquence – we want to actually change the substance of how school works. 

Doctor Frankenreform

Membership in each collective would be juggled from time to time to promote cross-pollination and reduce any tendency to fall into mutual back-scratching. Collectives would be overseen in a general way by the SDE using resources it wastes now on testing, compliance, and other bureaucracy not of its own design, but most of the decisions and actions of the collectives would be self-reported. The SDE or state legislature would only step in if a collective fails in some dramatic way to perform its functions. 

What madness would this unleash? Not much, I fear. The expense of real change is a natural retardant on progress, for better or worse. Keep in mind that most districts are already filled with teachers trained in core subjects, in classrooms set up and stocked for the same old same old, and led by graduates from the traditional system. 

If anything, I think it will be difficult to shake ourselves OUT of current ruts. I don’t expect much SO wildly outside-the-box that we make the funny pages up North. Change – and I do expect substantial, positive change – is likely to be evolutionary more than revolutionary. 

Hopefully it’s a LITTLE revolutionary, though?

Districts in sufficient proximity to one another could choose to work together in order to offer a greater array of options to their students. One might focus on STEM subjects and their real-world application in cooperation with local businesses or other institutions, while another combines arts programs from several schools to benefit from economies of scale. 

Bokachita High might offer a wider variety of AP courses than they could on their own, while Patumba Academy focuses on mechanical skills and FFA. These are just examples from my less-than-imaginative, old-schooled brain. I’m sure that districts given a little freedom would do much, much better. 

As to the potential for error, malice, or incompetence when granted such freedom, yes – stuff might happen. On the whole, however, I’ll trust a bunch of career educators who’ve stayed with their profession despite state abuse to make decisions about what’s best for kids over a bunch of career politicians who’ve done little to demonstrate similar priorities. 

The leadership of one district might be tempted to follow the path of least resistance, or place other priorities over the long-term good of students, but not five districts meeting together. Certainly not a dozen. 

I’m not saying we’re saints or martyrs, but we don’t get paid to bestow favors and we don’t get reelected based on our public posturing – given the choice, I’ll risk placing my faith in the educators. 

Irresponsibility

How do we judge the success or failure of a district or a collective? The resources currently devoted to standardized testing and those horrible companies would be redirected to a new branch of the State Department of Education in charge of communication with and feedback from universities, technical schools, and employers, both within and beyond state boundaries. 

They’d gather statistical and anecdotal feedback regarding how prepared students were for post-secondary education, employment, training, etc. They’d also do both short and long-term follow-up with randomly selected students to gage their perceptions of how prepared they were for college, career, life, etc. 

This is an imperfect process, made less so by limited resources, but as far as I know we don’t do anything at all like this under the current system. We just give this one multiple choice test in March, and… that’s it. That’s the summary of your entire educational experience, boiled down to a number. 

OK – that’s not fair. We give seven mutiple choice tests in March. THOSE are the summary of your entire educational experience, boiled down to seven numbers.

None of this is about tying this or that school district to one kid’s success or failure, but over a period of years we could accumulate some very useful feedback regarding the effectiveness of different things tried in various districts. All information would be made available to all districts for consideration in their collectives. I suppose the existing state tests could be available to districts as well, should they find internal value in administering them under whatever conditions they find appropriate. 

The more conservative elements of our state leadership are fond of talking about choice and competition in regards to public schools. If they mean it, they should be quite fond of a system giving so much choice to local districts. And while it’s not strictly ‘competition’, I’m not sure we want ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in our education system. We just need more flexibility figuring out what ‘winning’ looks like from place to place. 

We hear ‘accountability’ thrown around like a double-edged trump card every time talk of eliminating testing is broached. This setup includes plenty of accountability – the sort of professional oversight we like to think is common in medical or legal fields, as well as state-gathered feedback from universities and employers. 

You know all those times you’ve heard politicians talk about deregulating this or that industry so they’re free to create jobs and grow the economy and such? We need to tap into some of that libertarian fervor when it comes to state schools and tell the folks at the capitol to get out of the kitchen for a bit and let us cook. We promise, we’re taste-testing as we go. 

Fixing Education

The full potential of such a system is, like everything else, limited by funding. It’s more or less revenue-neutral, however, and if there are inherent flaws based on lack of resources, they can’t be much different or worse than those we face currently. In my unicorns and rainbows idealism, such a setup might encourage more participation on the part of state industries or those folks already dumping cash into #edreform – assuming they lack a specific agenda of their own in so doing. 

So turn us loose to really try to reach and teach our kids. We’ll hold one another’s feet to the fire, challenge and encourage and suggest and share. It’s not like the current system is working, and in almost every school in the state you’ll find teachers and administrators already bending and stretching and violating the rules as best they can to accommodate those in their care. Let us do it without having to pretend we’re not, and without so much resistance from people who’ve never met our kids. 

And if, in a decade, the industries and institutions to which you pay such deference are unhappy, then you’ll have your license to have your way with us – charters and virtuals, border to border, Pearson proudly stamped on every faux-ploma. 

Or… it might work. We might start finding better ways to help a wider variety of students not only graduate but go forth and prosper – in whatever way that might mean for them. The top can be toppier, the academic middle can be fished out of those cracks they’ve perpetually fallen into, and many, many more of those we’re currently losing altogether can find some reason and some pathway to make themselves useful economically and personally – contributing to the good of all instead of further draining what we have now. 

What, exactly, do we have to lose?

Let’s Have A (Populist) Party!

Farm Machine

I stopped to ask him what the machine was and what it did. He told me it was a manure spreader – a ‘sh*tslinger’, he said. 

Oh! It’s a big ol’ thing, isn’t it? I asked.

Well, he explained, it takes a LOT of sh*t to make stuff grow.

Isn’t THAT the truth, I thought. Always. 

Farmers in the late 19th century were frustrated.

To be fair, some of their struggles were not entirely unexpected. As the west ‘filled up’ with white homesteaders, choice farmland was increasingly rare. The U.S. Government had run out of peoples to remove, and even at their most Manifestly Destined could find no justification for another war with Mexico. 

Westward ExpansionThe 1890 Census would soon declare the frontier ‘closed’, to the chagrin of men like Frederick Jackson Turner who believed the westward struggle against nature and deprivation both defined and strengthened American character. Things were so desperate that white guys began looking lustfully at Oklahoma as their last best hope – the same ‘Indian Territory’ (I.T.) to whom the bulk of surviving Amerindians had been forcibly removed. 

I.T. had been chosen both for its distance from existing ‘civilization’ and the tacit assumption it represented the most god-forsaken plot of unloveable soil on the continent. Now it was being eyed with a desire born of desperation and a few hopeful shots of delusion. By 1889, the first sections were being opened to white settlement via land run, and eventually Oklahoma would become the 46th State of the Union. 

But not yet. 

As the century approached another turn, farmers across the Great Plains – even those in slightly more cooperative climes than Oklahoma’s – were enduring hard times. This was not unprecedented, but it did seem to be persisting – and advances in both literacy and communication facilitated an awareness that not everyone seemed to be sharing similar struggles. 

Oklahoma TerritoryIt wasn’t always a lack of production. Many farmers across the Plains were quite successful – at least in the traditional sense. They were growing and raising more good stuff than ever before! Wheat! Corn! Cotton! Moo-cows! Chickens! Tomatoes! Quiche! 

But thanks to the laws of supply and demand, the more they raised, the lower the selling price. That’s great for those purchasing, but suck city for those producing. Throw in improved agriculture in Europe, and the American farmer was in a world of hurt. 

As individualists, they reacted in an individually sensible, hard-working way – they looked to produce MORE.

HomesteadersFarmers already worked 365 days a year, sun-up to sun-down. They worked on Sundays, birthdays, Christmas, and when they were sick. They labored in the earth and cared for any animals they held, enduring drought and deluge, heat waves and freezes, in hopes of coaxing forth from the earth sustenance for themselves and the world. 

They grew and raised stuff you could eat, or wear, or – back in the day – smoke. They were useful. Heck – they were essential!

But this was a time of the ‘newer and better’ – machinery, fertilizers, and other technological wonders (“just look at this scientifically shaped point on this metal – that’s right, folks… REAL METAL – shovel!”) With ‘newer and better’, they could bring even more land into production! Purchase more acres, more machinery, more seed, more productivity – PROGRESS! 

But… this meant they’d need money. Borrowed money.

Looking east they saw a world of bankers and businessmen, of numbers and percentages, stock markets and manipulation. Men in suits, working what had already become known as “bankers’ hours” – 5 days a week minus holidays, done by mid-afternoon, and inside by the stove when it was cold or near an open window when it was hot. 

ScroogeThey didn’t actually grow anything, or produce anything your kids could eat, or wear, or even that you could smoke, drink, or otherwise enjoy. 

Instead, they scribbled in little books, mysterious ciphers covered in obscure terms, and this somehow meant they got to keep part of your money. You couldn’t for the life of your loved ones tell exactly WHAT they were doing, but you knew you needed them – they held access to loans, to financing, to equipment, seed, and survival during patient years. How did THIS make sense, they wondered? 

There’s a reason Dickens only a generation before had written Ebenezer Scrooge as a money lender (albeit a British one) – what could be more cold-hearted and useless in this life?**

It wasn’t JUST the banks, of course – farmers felt taken advantage of by railroads, the operators of grain elevators and silos, and pretty much anyone with money or influence in a system they instinctively believed warped in favor of the Ebenezers, but lacked the time or worldviews to master themselves. 

So the banks loaned money to the farmers, and the farmers purchased land and equipment. And it worked, in a sense – they became even harder-working, even more productive. They raised even MORE stuff you could eat, smoke, and wear!

A Vicious CycleWhich meant, of course, that prices went even LOWER. In some cases, less than was necessary to break even. Some couldn’t pay back their loans. So, they renegotiated, perhaps borrowed more, bought more, raised more…

See a pattern?

For the first time in American history, it seemed, a large demographic was doing everything right – they were honest, hard-working, productive, and responsible – and they were failing

Individuals had of course failed before, despite their best efforts, but individual failure can always be blamed on fate, or sin, or some personal shortcoming perhaps hidden in the mix. When the most idealized segment of American Dreamers – those whom Jefferson declared “the chosen people of God” – were facing bankruptcy and starvation, however… 

Either malicious players were subverting the system, or the system was broken. They weren’t quite ready to go full Tom Joad (“Damn right, I’m bolshevisky!”), but they were – for the first time en masse – willing to call on the one earthbound entity big enough to tackle perceived corruption and necessary correction on such a grand scale. Those who most clearly defined ‘individualism’ in the American psyche began talking, and joining together, to petition their government for a redress of grievances. 

People's Party FlyersThe Populist Party was born. 

They wanted what in their minds would be a return to a level (or fertile?) field. Government regulation or control of railroads, grain storage, even telegraphs – not to make things ‘easier’, but to make things ‘fair’. (The railroads and other owners likely quibbled over the precise definition of that term in such circumstances.) 

They also wanted to turn bi. Not just themselves, but the entire country. 

That’s probably best covered next time. 

RELATED POST: Singing Bi, Bi For Our Money Supply… 

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**I should, um… clarify for any of my creditors who might be reading this that these are not MY sentiments, of course. These are the approximated impressions of a thousand long-dead homesteaders. I love everyone the same and value our varied contributions to the Great American Melting Pot of Commerce. 

Also, I’m expecting a check and should be caught up by Monday.