Why Educating Our Children is Important — For All of Us
This past Saturday I attended the town hall meeting at Encinal High School – held by Sandre Swanson, Alameda’s representative to the State Assembly. It made me start thinking about the past (specifically Roosevelt’s New Deal), as well as the future.
There were citizens representing various social service organizations, unions, healthcare workers and, of course, folks representing the interests of public education. And while some asked questions and others expressed outrage over the proposed state budget, one gentleman suggested we try a “New Deal” approach to our current situation.
I have to admit a bias here. I’ve always been fascinated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal – his idea that government could adequately respond to the Great Depression by channeling the redistribution of wealth in this country. His programs failed miserably in some ways and had great success in others – and the New Deal will continue to be debated by historians and economists alike.
But the idea Roosevelt clung to in such dark days has chased me ever since I heard of the Governor’s proposed budget in January. Our infrastructure is failing us in California. We face daunting shortages in the technological, educational, and healthcare workforce. We currently face a potential recession — we have all seen the news reports about the stability or lack thereof in the banking industry. And, like other coastal regions around the world, we’re struggling to understand the scope and pace of global warming and its attendant sea level rise.
It can seem as if there is more to fear than “fear itself.”
However, unlike in Roosevelt’s day, really addressing these issues adequately calls on having a well-educated workforce. That is, the jobs of tomorrow demand trained workers the likes of which would have made folks in the 30’s flabbergasted.
We need nurses and engineers; computer technicians and folks who can design and build not just buildings, but environmentally sound buildings with complex systems embedded within them.
And that need is staring us down during a time when we are failing our children (and ourselves) by not properly funding our public schools in California.
Some of you have heard me say in recent months that I believe free access to quality public education is the civil rights issue of our time.
I say this not only because it gets to the heart of how we are preparing children to take care of themselves someday – to break out of a cycle of poverty or to rise above a disability or learning English as a second language. I also say this because it is at the heart of what our society looks like in 10, 15, 20, 25 years. How can we envision a day when racial and class inequities no longer haunt our society when we allow for them within our public institutions themselves? And who will step up to be a nurse, a teacher, the person who creates the software needed for innovations in shipping or the person who figures out the truly affordable, sustainable vehicle?
After the town hall meeting Saturday, I headed over to the “Women Who Dare” luncheon for Girls Inc. It was a lovely event, celebrating woman and their accomplishments – some adults, some young women just getting started. One of the awardees was Maya Harris, the Executive Director of the ACLU of Northern California.
She was great: Accomplished, dynamic, driven. When she got up to speak I thought for certain she would begin to talk about civil liberties and the protection of private information, perhaps the courts in America or the need for reformation in our prison systems. But no. She spoke eloquently about public education. She began to ask the very questions I am asking us to think about today. She reaffirmed for me that, while all of the other things we discuss are vital to a society’s health – public education is the key to unlocking their potential.
Without public education, we cannot write a dynamic history for our times. Without public education, we will not be ready to address the situations we face – on foreign or domestic soil. Without public education, our other much-needed institutions begin to crumble – institutions, that is, like public safety, transportation, healthcare, and environmental action.
When 65% of California’s children do not graduate on time with a regular diploma (making us 38th in the U.S.), even enacting a New-New Deal would be hard for us, because we aren’t giving students the tools they need to enter the workforce.
When you think about getting involved in public education (e.g., when you are deciding whether to vote Yes on Measure H on June 3rd or you consider giving to the Foundation or a PTA) remember Roosevelt.
During his first Inaugural speech in 1933, he said, “If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective.”
It is easy for us to remember the ways in which our children are dependent upon us – but are we doing a good enough job remembering how dependent we are upon them?
It is time to take care of all of California’s children – so that they are prepared, tools in hand, when it becomes their time to take care of our businesses, our governments, our people, and our world.
Please Step Up and do what you can to help the children. Vote Yes on Measure H. Give to the Foundation. Volunteer in your schools. Our children – and all of us – need you.
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