Examine your local school board. Traditionally school boards across the country are elected by the community. They are unpaid. While there are always exceptions, in most districts the board is composed of “concerned citizens”—usually parents, occasionally a retired teacher, sometimes an activist with a view toward starting a career in politics leading to higher office, sometimes a business person and maybe even an individual who wants to “get involved.”
When I use the term “education” I mean the occupation of training K-12 students in the necessary skills to become productive citizens. You don’t just walk in with good intentions. A good pilot is not always a good IP and a good IP is not always a good academic instructor. You need to be aware of things like curriculum development, lesson planning, classroom management, objective setting, evaluation creation, standards development, textbook selection, etc.
School boards do more than simply set school education policy. They also hire administrators, must comply with state and federal regulations, must understand tax laws and budgeting, must be involved in real estate transactions, must set personnel policies, must deal with legal challenges, etc. They need to have business experience.
Unfortunately most Americans think Suzy’s mom would be a good school board member because she “wants to do what’s right” for her children. That don’t feed the bulldog!
In TX we’ve got an abomination called the TX State Board of Education. These are ideologues who determine the curriculum and the textbooks for the entire state (and since TX is so huge, that influences curricula and textbooks for other states who follow the lead.) They are a battleground for religion vs science. The one side wants to throw out Thomas Jefferson in favor of Cesar Chavez while the other side wants you to teach the children that God literally created the universe in six calendar days and it is all about 6000 years old.
School boards are simply a Petri dish that offers a lab model for what is essentially wrong with democracy. We (the people) are too bloody stupid to govern ourselves. The answer is a benevolent dictator, but unfortunately they are in short supply and the truism about power corrupting absolutely applies.
1 comment:
I'm more inclined to think a system similar to that in "Starship Troopers", would be the ideal. Problem with benevolent dictators is that one, any person who WANTS to be dictator, by that very definition has already proven that they will abuse the position. And two, the dictator would necessarily come from the same pool of stupid people to which you refer...
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