Public Education Matters

4.18.10

A Weekend Discussion of Public Education

I’ve mentioned my brother ( the fiscally conservative Republican lawyer) before in this blog and I want to tell you that over the course of this past weekend, I took a lot of good natured teasing from my favorite (only) sibling about this blog. He tells me to cease and desist with my “liberal, socialist ways” and that no one wants to listen to my thoughts. I reminded him that this is America, full of freedom of speech and democracy, and I do happen to have the right to state my own personal opinions on my own blog. :-)

The occasion for my brother and I to be together this weekend was because my father was posthumously inducted into the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. (If you scroll down below Ernie Pyle a bit, you’ll see him in the list of 2010 inductee at the far left.) One of the criteria behind inductions to this hall of fame, besides contributions to the field of journalism, is the contribution to community and society in general. Per that criterion, I unabashedly say that there never was a person more deserving of this award than my father.

The induction speech, given by our friend and one of my father’s former employees, Justin Peeper, spoke specifically to that my father was most often the first in our community to “weigh in” on issues of public concern and that many very fine causes were successful because of his editorial support. Mr. Peeper also cited my father’s high degree of fair-mindedness and his vision and the trust that the community had in him.

I’d also like to note the presence at the ceremony of the widow of our former Governor Frank O’Bannon. One of the other very deserving inductees was Randy West, former Editor of the “The Corydon Democrat” the newspaper owned by the O’Bannon family. This coincidence triggered the memory of other honors that my father was bestowed in his lifetime. He was twice named a Sagamore of the Wabash, once by Governor O’Bannon and he was the first recipient of an award that Mr. West also was presented- the Charlie Biggs Commitment to Community Award.

So, why is all this important to my “lowly” blog about public education? Well, because my father was maybe the BIGGEST supporter of public education that ever walked the earth. His mother was a teacher, his wife was a teacher , his granddaughter just received her degree in education, and of course, there’s me, his daughter, who has worked 30 plus years in education.

Perhaps the greater point though is that my father was also one of the biggest supporters of democracy that ever walked the earth and if you had the opportunity to ever talk with him about it, he would have told you in no uncertain terms how vital PUBLIC education is to our (or any) democracy, in fact to the very survival of democracy.

I was privileged to have had many long discussions about my field with him when he was alive. While we didn’t always agree about everything, I can tell you without equivocation that he was against the use of the public dollar for vouchers and eventually against the charter school movement and that he was vehemently against the property tax cuts because they were not replaced by a stable source of income for our schools.

Originally, my father leaned towards support of NCLB (I did mention that by and large he leaned toward being a Republican, no?) until I loaned him a book about it (forgive me for not remembering which one) and after discussion between the two of us and reading it, he then came to much the same conclusion, as did Diane Ravitch in her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System" . He came to believe that the reforms sought with NCLB would severely weaken, if not destroy, the public school system in this country.

All of this is not to say that my father was not for accountability in our school systems, but he believed we were ALL accountable: teachers, parents, the community, legislators, school board members, unions, administrators, and students! To him, it was a SHARED responsibility that political motives and uneducated, uninformed policies had no place in. He meant “shared” in the truest sense of the word.

It is also not to say that he didn’t believe that at times the teachers unions needed to re-examine some of their policies and stances. He did believe, however, that there IS a definite place in the world for teachers unions. He felt strongly about their existence. He simply wished that they and the Departments of Education would work together more for the common good.

My father covered numerous school board meetings in his day, he editorially and enthusiastically supported building drives and positive educational programs. He actually understood complicated school budgets and the politics involved (Ironically he was not a journalism major in college, but rather an economics major) and he endeavored to stay current on national and state educational policies.

He covered events and wrote about issues and did interviews with school administrators and teachers . I would be so bold to say that there was no community newspaper that ever provided more coverage of all (not just athletics) school activities and events than his newspaper did. Yes, it’s true, part of this was to sell papers, but largely it was because he believed in the good of all these things. He believed in showing the community what was good in our local systems. He believed students, administrations, and teachers should get public recognition for the good work that they did. And he believed that there was a TREMENDOUS amount of good in the public school system.

So , part of what my father was honored for this weekend was his support of our community and society through his support of public schools. This weekend of honor for his work was very bittersweet for my entire family. As we shared in the honor and as my brother teased me, I felt the loss tremendously- because I know that my father would have bridged it all by teasing us both and then we’d have had a wonderful discussion of it all examining all the perspectives; my father thinking rings around the two of us, I’m sure. He was the best sounding board I ever had about my field and more than anything I would love to discuss the current issues with him.

I know my father and I would have had many deep discussions about the Race to the Top issues, the good and the bad. I know he would have weighed in about Tony Bennett’s Fast Forward Plan. I do not believe he would have been in support of it either. I think he would have said that he’s going about things from a completely wrong direction and I believe that he would have written then about what he thought was the right direction which is collaboration, not a punitive move to destroy the teachers union. What’s more, I believe that people in this community at least would have listened to him.

I am basically a “nobody” with a blog, while my father was a respected leader in the community, known for his intelligence, and his fairness, and delightfully for his sense of optimism even when things look very bleak, as they do right now for Indiana’s public school system.

But he is no longer with us, so I have to make do without him when I want to discuss education, so I turned to my brother this weekend. And, I love and respect my brother of course- all differences of political opinion and teasing aside. But in the absence of my father, thank goodness for my brother’s wife! Lorie is quite an intelligent person herself but in particular she was appreciated yesterday because she herself is a school board member of their local school system in Michigan and as part of her duties she just returned from a National School board convention where she had the opportunity to hear Diane Ravitch (see link above) talk. Amazingly she had not heard of her before and had picked the session randomly. She came away from the session as firm of a believer in what Ms. Ravitch is saying about school reform as I am.

She had also had the opportunity to hear Anthony Mullen (National Teacher of the Year) speak about his personal experiences in teaching. I personally believe that his story about the effectiveness of a caring and involved teacher can do more to reform education than ANY browbeating, punitive measure hammered into place by a school superintendent or a legislature. I believe the public should hear his perspective.

Also chiming into the ongoing discussion was Justin (mentioned above as the speech giver and my father’s former employee.) An interesting thing about Justin is that he is now a young teacher and even a Department Head, himself. He also believes deeply in the public school system. He also still works part-time for my father’s paper (the Bluffton News-Banner) and you’ll often see an editorial by him there. Moreover, often those editorials are about public education’s importance. It’s a delight to see him carry on my father’s tradition of weighing in on public education issues with the same optimism for the future and the same belief in the preservation of public education that my father held.

Justin, it should be noted, had just flown in from taking a group of high school journalism students on a field trip, arriving at 4 in the morning to be back just in time for breakfast, a walk around Bloomington’s campus and self-led tour of the Ernie Pyle Journalism building, the luncheon, his speech, and our discussion.

All in all it was a marvelous and happy weekend and a time for reflection. It was a weekend that filled me with pride for many things, but foremost, pride that I am the daughter of such a wonderful man as my father was. And despite my brother’s light-hearted urgings to cease and desist, I believe I’ll follow the example of my father and continue speaking out on and for the things that I believe in. (-: This is America and this is a democracy and freedom of speech is both a privilege and a responsibility.

Reading this blog and hearing what I have to say is an option for the reader. My only real hope in writing here is that the blog posts will cause people to think, consider, and maybe re-examine their actions.... just as my father’s reporting and writing in the newspaper often did.

You might remember in the last blog post I spoke about the exchange between Indiana’s Union President and Tony Bennett, the State Superintendent of Public Schools. I don’t believe I told you that in answer to another email sent by Dr. Bennett to all of Indiana’s teachers stating that he would like to hear our opinions regarding education in our state not filtered through the ISTA, I replied with a link to this blog. ( I figured I’d take him at his word that he wanted to hear my opinion even if my brother does not. (-:)

On Thursday, a member of Dr. Bennett's staff emailed me back to tell me that Dr. Bennett wanted her to get back with me as soon as possible and indicate that it was clear from this blog that while we clearly had differences of opinions, it seemed we both shared the same concern for students. I’d like to believe that assertion is true.

I appreciate that Dr. Bennett took the time to have a member of his staff email me back. I’d have appreciated if she’d spelled my name correctly, but that’s really a trivial concern. What’s more important to me is that this gives me just a glimmer of hope that Dr. Bennett or at least a member of his staff might follow this blog from here on out. It gives me a glimmer of hope that he actually might consider different thoughts on educational reform other than his own or those of Mitch Daniel’s.

I realize that I will never be as influential as my father, but I’d like to think that my opinions and thoughts do matter a little bit. I’d like to believe that the thoughts and opinions of my fellow educators matter a little bit to “the powers that be” as well. I’d like to think that someone is listening. Thank you if you're someone who did.