An ode to our first house

Dear Battle Ground house:

We've had a lot of good memories. You were our first real home together. We thought it would last forever. But alas, there are some red flags that we ignored and forged the relationship anyway. And I'm not sad to say this relationship is over. We argued with the realtor about your location. We hated how far away everything was. So you made up for it with fantastic neighbors.

I will never forget Tyson cutting down the ivy off the fence and discovering that the fence was being HELD UP by the ivy. And we met our next door neighbor when the fence fell into his yard. When he saw it, he offered us beer. On the other side, we had master gardeners who gave us food every summer when they had too much for eating and canning. And the parents across the street whose son is exactly Sam's age who are about the nicest neighbors anyone could hope for...I'm gonna miss them a lot, too, but their house didn't treat them any better than you did us. And then there's Lloyd. Sam is going to be devastated I think. Whose driveway is he going to play in now? Every white pickup truck he sees on the road he yells, "THERE'S LLOYD!!!" Sad clown.

But you, little gray house, did nothing to help the situation. You forced our hand. You attracted a massive ant invasion 2 days before I gave birth. You grew mold on our clothes, our furniture, and leaked water through the roof on my BRAND NEW WASHING MACHINE!! You gave my firstborn eczema. I don't think I'll ever forgive you for that one.


And your popcorn ceilings. Really. Why did you ever think THAT was stylish?

I've grieved over you. I owned and buried my first dog and cat here. We started raising our first child here. And I'm done. I hate being 20 miles away from anything or anyone I want to be around. I hate being constantly sick from allergies. I can't believe how much money we blew on you. And nothing to show for it but a crappy credit score.

Believe me, I understand that it wasn't all your fault. Your previous relationship was no good either. You were abused and mistreated by the jerks who sold you to us. I can't fault you for that, I suppose, but you just weren't right for us. We knew it from the beginning and we should have let you go so the right people could have had you instead. People who could have fixed your problems. People who cared about living in this location. People who would have stayed with you for the long haul. And I'm sorry about that. I truly hope you do better next time. But I hope we do better, too.

Sincerely,
Tina, Tyson, and Sam (Cody and Oscar, RIP)

Truth in advertising?

In 1973, President Nixon took a look at Edgar Kaiser's for-profit hospital (the first of its kind), and decided that their business model would be a good one to support as part of a national health care policy....Today the results of that idea? It costs more than $20,000 for a non-medicated, totally natural hospital birth with a stay of 2 days. People in poverty flood emergency rooms for regular care issues because they have no money for health insurance and/or jobs that don't provide insurance and therefore cannot afford a regular doctor visit where they could be turned away. Insurance is kind of like a "voucher" for health care. In some cases, it covers the entire cost, but as many of us are aware, it hardly ever does. At the very least, we have deductibles and co-pay amounts we must pay out of pocket, not including any prescriptions we must buy...

What if education worked like that? We all get a government voucher of our own tax dollars to choose whatever school we want to send our kids to. You could choose the best schools for your kid to go to, no boundary paperwork or anything! Sounds like a great idea, right? Except just like the hospitals, the best ones will cost more than the voucher amount (because all those extra services cost money!). And those who can't pay the extra will either go somewhere else not as good or go without. (Bias alert: I happen to believe that going without is not an option for our society to continue to prosper....as going without some kinds of care has proven disastrous for our state of health in this country...)

A basic premise of advertising is that you must convince the public that they NEED your product. Usually this comes in the form of some sort of failure on the customer's part. We're not pretty enough, so we need COSMETICS. We're not healthy enough so we need VITAMINS and ORGANIC FOOD. We're not good enough parents, so we need BABY MONITORS and PARENTING BOOKS. We're not cool enough to be accepted by our peers, so we need ALCOHOL and FANCY CARS.

So in order to sell something you must first prove that the existing system is broken.

You mean like "A Nation at Risk"? You mean like NCLB? You mean like "Race to the Top"? How about blaming the teachers pensions for the lack of money to buy essential supplies like photocopy paper and books? Prove it like that? (On a side note, it REALLY bugs me that Bill Gates is at the forefront of this reform movement since he never even ATTENDED a public school. Ever. What the hell does he know about how a public school works except what other people tell him?)

And to be sure, I know not all public schools are wonderful. I worked in South Chicago. I had crack dealers in my classroom. I've seen good teachers get burned out when they are overwhelmed by the needs of so many kids, year after year, who churn through the machine with minimal progress because of circumstances outside the school. I've also seen principals with too much power pushing an agenda, politicians who think they know what's going on because "my kid went to this one public school one time...."
If the issue really is fixing the truly bad schools, why aren't we emulating the schools that DO work? And I don't mean like China, since they're trying to change their school system to look more like ours....
Why not give all schools the resources to look like New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL? Because not all schools in the US have a bunch of rich white kids and involved parents. The solution for New Trier is not going to be the solution for a school in the Bronx. Trick question: why do American kids generally do poorly on standardized tests? The answer is in the previous sentence. So why use standardized tests to prove school effectiveness?


First make people believe it's broken. Then they will want your product.


We have a really warped way of looking at poor people in this country that stems way back from our Puritan roots. They believed (as the Jewish Pharisees did before them) that people were poor because God was punishing them. Conversely, financial success was seen as God's blessing (for the record, I don't think that making money by enslaving people in 3rd world countries is really a consequence of God's "blessing") Or they were poor because of something they did to themselves. It was "their choice" to be poor. I'd like to say many of us know better, but I've caught myself..."I won't give money to this homeless person because he might spend it on drugs." How do I know that? I don't. Or we ignore the poor because it's just easier to deal with that way.

What would happen to those people already living on the edge of poverty if the only way to access good schools was to pay money out of pocket? Money they don't have?

I wish the profiteers would just be honest and say "look, we see a great business opportunity here to make money from a service that everyone uses. Education." But honesty wouldn't get them huge amounts of money and power.


In order to sell something, you must convince people they need it. Support public education. For everyone, not just the privileged class.