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Kinky Friedman wants to be governor of Texas. Friedman,
who once captained a country and western group called The Texas Jewboys, is
the author of several books and has become a TV personality of some
importance. He’s also a resident of Republican-run Texas and feels that he
and his fellow Texans have been foully victimized by the governorships of
George W. Bush and Rick Perry. Running as an independent,
Friedman has put together an ambitious platform that would obviate just about
everything that Texans hold dear. He thinks that there should be much
stricter regulations governing the use of the death penalty and he favors gay
marriage. “Why shouldn’t they suffer along with the rest of us?,” asks
Friedman. But it is in the field of
education that his most innovative proposals have been formulated. Despite
the highly touted educational performance of Texas high school students when
Bush was governor, the fact is that the state ranks 50th in terms
of the numbers of graduates who go on to college. Their dropout rate and the
amount they spend on education is barely better than that of Mississippi,
which is the anchor in these categories.
Striking at the heart of the bureaucratic
beast that education has become, Friedman proposes to do away completely with
state standardized tests and shift the emphasis to sound teaching by highly
qualified teachers. In addition, he would disengage the economic stranglehold
that sports in the public schools now have on budgets of localities and
insist on corporate funding for such activities. The educational experience,
he insists, should focus on the development of intellectual pursuits directed
by highly trained teaching professionals. Would that Kinky Friedman were
running for governor in Virginia. Let’s face it. What we’re
apparently going to be dealing with from now until November are two
gubernatorial candidates, who, like Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, are so
enmeshed in me-tooism that they’re virtually indistinguishable. Taking their
cue from the free lunch bunch and the we-hate-taxes crowd, the best
educational proposals they can come
up with involve stripping localities of sorely needed funds for school
buildings and the enhancement of school programs. Reacting to residents clamoring
for lower real estate taxes, Dumb and Dumber have decided to accede to their
wishes, get their votes and let schools, recreational facilities, roads,
mental health programs and other locally-funded enterprises go to pot. At this point, the only
thoroughbred in this race of donsie donkeys and Eleatic elephants is Winchester
Republican-turned-independent Russ Potts. Unlike Dee and Dum, Potts seems to
have a grasp on reality and is willing to discuss seriously education,
transportation and the taxes needed to support them. Perhaps a good place to start
such discussions is with Friedman’s proposal that state standardized exams,
or SOLs, as we call them, should be chucked in favor of solid classroom
teaching by well paid and highly qualified teachers. We might well ask if we’re
sacrificing and stifling intellectual creativity on the altar of rigid rote
memorization for the sake of passing multiple choice examinations. If things
are going so swimmingly, why was linguistic expert and English professor
Stanley Fish recently bemoaning the fact that college freshmen can’t write
coherent sentences? Why is he
insisting that high school English teachers give up their craving for
exam-based content over literary form?
Evidently Johnny can read, but he can’t write worth a damn. The people should also know why
Virginia is begging the federal government to release it from some of the
provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Have we finally realized that the
one-size-fits-all, test-driven approach to education simply isn’t working?
Are our underpaid instructors forever more to be harnessed to the reins of
teaching to the tests? Might the state of New York be
onto something with its consortium schools, which evaluate students on the
basis of performance portfolios in lieu of state tests? Fully 88% of students
graduating from these schools go on to college, as opposed to the 70% from
test-ridden schools. The dropout rate is just half that of the other public
schools, in which students have to pass five state tests to graduate. As an
ancillary note, last year 51% of Lafayette students and 64% of Jamestown
students went on to four-year colleges.
These are the kind of probing
discussions we should be having about education, transportation, Medicaid and, yes, taxes. Unfortunately, we’re probably
not going to hear much about all this from either the Democrats or the
Republicans. Jerry Kilgore’s campaign has already launched its first
torpedoes, and they have nothing to do with substance or issues of import.
Tim Kaine is a liberal, and that’s all the people need to know. Kaine will raise taxes, and that‘s all the
people need to know. What the people really need to
know is the truth about the necessity for taxation to keep this floundering
ship of state afloat. What the people need to know is why these two political
jellyfish are focusing on Gilmoreish panacean sops instead of confronting the
issues with a modicum of reality and truth.
Perhaps it’s time to try to
convince Kinky Friedman to switch his residency to Virginia. Or maybe we
should take a much closer look at Russ Potts. There must be some reason why
Kilgore refuses to include Potts in the gubernatorial debates. What could
that be? |
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lewleadbeater.com Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved
email: LWL@lewleadbeater.com |
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