Enjoying summer ... while pondering the upcoming election season.

I have been travelling a lot this summer. On the menu at one restaurant I read the saying,

For every wound, a balm
For every sorrow, a cheer
For every storm, a calm
For every thirst, a beer.

I chuckled and remembered Ben Franklin’s quote, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

Beer was one way to preserve grain that took up less space and was very popular. Brewers in America were aware of European techniques of brewing, but they realized the immigrants to America were not exactly the same as the people who stayed behind, so they did things differently. Not better or worse, just different, in order to meet different needs, wants, and cultural norms.

They reinvented the wheel.

They didn’t take a wheel designed for a different wagon and force-fit it where it almost assuredly wouldn’t work as well. That would be stupid and only someone who had no idea about how wheels actually work would even consider such a thing.

I just came from an NEA leaders conference and someone made a comment about not wanting to reinvent the wheel. It hit me that often we do need to reinvent the wheel in education. But developing new wheels is time consuming and takes more resources, not less. We have been resource-starved in education for so long. It is the norm. We do not even know how to demand the resources necessary to do the quality educating we want to do, and are expected to do.

Why a lack of resources? We all want our schools to improve and be the best, but the same people who want us to use someone else’s wheel frantically work to divert education resources. They save a little money now, but it will cost our society mightily in the long run. It’s like saying you want to brew quality beer, but divert the resources, the grain, to a side profit, and then complain that the brewer is incompetent. Or that you want a first class wagon but with wheels force-fit from another style wagon, maybe from Singapore. Will it work? Almost certainly not.

Would you want the wheels on your child’s educational wagon to be fit by someone trained to fit wheels, or by someone wanting a cheap fit? Do you care? What can you do? There is an election coming up. Which candidates want more for education and are willing to commit the resources? Almost all candidates are pro-education before the election. Which ones are willing to step up and commit the necessary resources?

Make the best choices you can this election season, and look forward to a balm, a cheer, a calm, and if you are so inclined, a beer.