Posted by
Bill Crawford on Thursday, March 31, 2011 11:23:36 AM
In 2009, the Wake County School Board here in North Carolina was already up against it. They had been playing out some ideas for a number of years, mainly year round schools and forced busing to create diversity. For all it did, it also played havoc with family schedules (imagine having two kids on a nine month schedule and one year round), along with the lengthy bus rides that busing away from home district entails.
That year, a new practice became common- the scheduling of semi-regular teacher workdays in the middle of the week, eventually derisively called "Wacky Wednesdays", and it all gave a political impetus to oust most of the Board and bring in a new majority. A Republican majority. They came in and immediately acted on their campaign promises to end all this.
Well, all hell broke loose. Teacher and student protests. Parent counter-protests. NAACP protests. I heard every talking point in creation on this one. They acted without waiting for full public comment. The vote was a slim majority of a tiny turnout, and so wasn't legitimate. The new policy was inhumane. It was discriminatory, It was racist.
Now, they are looking to update their accreditation with AdvancED, and the group is holding it up until the Board satisfies them on concerns raised by the NAACP. The Board's hiring of a certain lawyer. The outside training of new Board members. The budgetary costs of ending year round schools. You know- education issues. How's that?
Mind you, they passed off accreditation on the Halifax schools recently without an issue, and I've heard that system descibed as a war zone by many people. When did this process become political?
Reality check: the education industry is a Democrat animal now. That is where they plant their political flag, and that is where their contributions go. If you aren't with them, you are against them. Er, that is, you are against the children, and the future.
Segue to Wisconsin. Governor Walker passed his reforms over the dead (absent) bodies of the minority Democrats. The Governor signed the Bill, and it should be law, right? Oh, no, not if you can find a friendly Judge to pass an injunction from the Seretary of State to "publish" the damned thing. So, they found another person to publish it, and the whole thing is being held up in court.
Try to understand: conservatives regard government as more of a necessary evil. They enter political office to try and tame it, and eventually they leave public service. It's been nice, people, but I have a life.
To a progressive, government is a life vocation. To some, it approaches a religion. The conservative approach is something to be regarded as some sort of interloper, intruding on their good works. Whatever it takes to stop these intruders is all for a good cause.
And in the process, if the voters occasionally get their storm und drang thing going and set that back, their ignorance must be countered. By any means necessary. It's all there in Saul Alinsky's masterwork. "Rules For Radicals". Read it and understand.