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It’s Time for “The Funky Winkerbean Rant”
National Politics, Personal, Texas Politics Comments (0)
Do not blame me for this rant. You should blame Lisa for this post at Right Voices.
I live in Texas. Here, football is religion. People with no children in school attend the weekly high school football game more regularly than they attend church. If you want to inspire bad blood between neighboring towns you have one mayor disparage the next town’s team.
That’s the backdrop of my statements and why things are not likely to get better until football stops being a religion.
I am a political junkie. Google News is my homepage. I’m probably one of about 50 people in my county who can name you all of my elected representatives from mayor (Darren Moore) up to President (if you don’t know that it’s George W. Bush then you should go somewhere else now. The rest of this won’t mean much to you). I’m probably one of about 20 in my county who would have actually met the staffers of at least 3 of those elected officials. And I might be the only one in the county to have testified before the Texas Legislature on more than one occassion.
Our Legislature recently finished its Fourth Called Session. That Called (or “Special”) Session was to deal with school finance and property taxes. There is a big problem in this state with school financing. Some districts have a lot of money to do things with, others have very little. A few years ago, our state Supreme Court said that this was unacceptable.
Governor Perry wants to fix this. I think he’s got some bad ideas on how to go about it, but that’s politics. So, he called the Legislature into session to deal with the problem.
Ultimately, the underlying reason behind the lawsuit was that school systems with more money could offer a better education. Never mind that it isn’t true.
If you want to fix the education system, you fix the two underlying problems:
- Parents, and;
- Teachers.
That’s right. Parents and teachers. You see, these two groups are far more important to the educational process than the students themselves. If both parents and teachers care that students are actually learning then the students will get educated pretty much in spite of themselves. Teachers see that the student gets the raw knowledge that they need to succeed. Note that I’m NOT saying some things. I’m NOT saying that teachers should be social workers; that’s why we have social workers. I’m NOT saying that teachers should be giving out medical advice; that’s why we have doctors and advanced practice nurses. The parents see that their child is getting that raw knowledge and hold their son or daughter accountable for assimilating it.
Now that isn’t to say that more money could not be useful. But if that money isn’t aimed at helping teachers to get the raw knowledge that students need into their “young skulls full of mush” then it is really misspent money. This is why I think we need to fix our teacher testing process. Should any teacher be able to do basic math and read at a basic level? Certainly. However, it is much more important that they be competent in their field. A science teacher does not really need to have a fundamental knowledge of how the electorial college works. So, testing them in social science does not help much other than to validate that yes, they really did deserve their lambskin. On the other hand, testing a social studies teacher on how to properly use sine and cosine is just about as useful.
So, what does this have to do with the religion of football in Texas? Well, it’s another of my wacky ideas.
If you remember the old days of the Funky Winkerbean comic strip then you probably remember Coach Bushka was also the social studies teacher. All the class ever did was watch films. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration of the way things are in real life, but it’s not that far off. Schools seem to feel that if a coach only coaches that they are not getting their money’s worth. So, coaches teach…usually social studies. And they do not tend, it seems, to know much about social studies.
The result of this is that students get poor educations. This is for the same reason that we should expect children to get poor educations in English and math if we ask the English major to teach math and the maths major to teach English. Their college educations MAY have given them enough knowledge to impart some knowledge to the kids, but by taking them out of their chosen field you have reduced their effectiveness. An English major cannot possibly teach algebra as effectively as they can teach English. By the same token a kineseology major cannot possibly teach social science as effectively as a government, history, or political science major can.
Which brings me to Lisa’s post. It starts off thusly:
Did you know that World War II started in 1939? It’s true, it did. September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland – that started it. And yet, my fourteen year old son comes home and tries to convince me that the war actually started in 1941. He tells me that the war started on December 7, 1941 – in reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
“The US is famous for knee-jerk reactions with acts of war, Mom,” he informs me. “Just like 9/11 – - the reaction to 9/11 was just screaming W-A-R..so we went to war with the first country we were able to.”
Wow. What a string of false facts leading to a faulty conclusion. Open hostilities in World War II started on 3 Sept. 1939, when Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany, two days after it’s invasion of Poland on 1 Sept. 1939. This side of the Atlantic Ocean became involved on 10 Sept. 1939, as Canada declares war on Germany. I’m certain that the British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and (perhaps especially) the French are happy to learn that they were not really fighting a war between 1939 and 1941, despite its formal declaration and the commencement of hostilities.
American involvement was minimal (we were declared neutral), but important. On 11 March 1941, Roosevelt signed the “Lend-Lease Act” which allowed us to sell, transfer, exchange, or lend equipment to the aid of any country wishing to defend itself against the Axis powers and so assist them in their war efforts.
That neutrality ended after we were bombed by the Japanese on 7 Dec. 1941, despite the fact that we were engaged in active (even if unfruitful) diplomatic talks with Japan. And war was declared against the Empire of Japan on 8 Dec. 1941. The Germans declared war on the United States on 11 Dec. 1941, which the President and Congress reciprocated later that same day.
The United States had known of the war being waged in Europe for some three years. We had been actively assisting the Allied powers with materiale for much of that time, culminating in the Lend-Lease Act several months before the Japanese surprise attack.
But notice, we did not declare war on Germany until it had already declared war upon us. President Roosevelt had known for some time that we would eventually have to go to war with Germany and this was reflected by Ray Atherton’s comments as the German Charge d’Affairs hands him the note whereby Germany notified us that she had declared war against the United States. That we would declare war on Japan in the face its hostile act is not a “knee-jerk” reaction. It is what nation-states do when attacked.
America is, most assuredly, NOT famous for “knee-jerk reactions with acts of war.” To assert such is to assert that there is nothing worse than war. About a month ago, I covered this topic in the context of our national election and the reflection that it will bring regarding our national will to prosecute the War on Terror to its end. To quote Ronald Reagan again:
We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.
I realize that such a pronouncement, of course, would possibly be laying one open to the charge of warmongering — but that would also be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price and has fought harder for freedom that any generation that had ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible, all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of John Stuart Mill when he said that “war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.”
The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. The man who has nothing which he cares about more than his personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
So, where did Lisa’s son learn history so incorrectly? From his social studies teacher. Probably a coach. Why do I say that? Because I refuse to believe that a person with an actual degree in government, political science, or history would make such an error intentionally and would have had too much instruction to have made it unintentionally.
Usually, my criticism of coaches teaching social sciences is that they may do an adequate job but never a good job. They teach the rote memorization of dates when it is really stories and ideas that make up history. the United Kingdom probably would not have turned out much differently had the Battle of Hastings been lost by King Harold in 1077 instead of 1066. But there would be much different had the Normans not brought their thoughts, ideas, and language with them.
The United States would not have turned out much different had our history teachers been literally correct in saying that Declaration of Independence actually been signed on July 4, 1776 (the date of its adoption and printing), instead of August 2, 1776 (the actual date that most signatures were affixed). But the thoughts and ideas espoused in that document have made a world of difference to us as a people.
The unfortunate thing is that our public schools tend to gloss over the stories and the struggles of our forebearers. Consider the racism of President Woodrow Wilson. I’d wager that your public school American history or civics teacher never told you about that. They probably told you nothing about Helen Keller other than that she was “The Little Blind and Deaf Girl Who Could” and that she devoted her life to work for the blind and deaf. Then you probably do not realize that she was also a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (the “Wobblies”) and revolutionary who engaged in the following exchange:
“What are you committed to–education or revolution?”
“Revolution.” She answered decisively. “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”
Whether you agree with how she came to be a revolutionary Marxist or not, the story of her journey to become one is a vital part of our nation’s history that is often completely overlooked. Especially by coaches who teach history as an afterthought to Friday night’s game.
Tossing more money will not solve that problem. It will only be solved when we decide that coaches need to coach and history and civics teachers should be history and civics teachers who realize that their job is to impart knowledge, not political indoctrination.
MickC @ May 27, 2004