Our Schools Suck
It’s Friday in America. Back in the day, Friday was a number one favorite day to skip school, go cruising with friends (who would all skip too, no repercussions), have lunch out, and start a nice long hazy three day weekend.
The American school system is so maligned, we don’t even think of it as a topic of conversation most of the time. Class dictates class; as Nisha Martin, one of our organizers from Milwaukee relates, private schools incentivize education with equipment, materials, and compelling educators.
And if you’re in the public schools, you’re lucky to come out literate. The necessity of teaching to the lowest common denominator means that, if you want to learn, you have to find your own way there.
America is outpaced, education wise, by practically every industrialized country on the planet. What can we do about it? Tell our leaders that it’s time for them to learn.
One leader who might just be willing to listen is Corey Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey. In 2002 he ran against the entrenched incumbent, Sharpe James, and their back and forth battle became a nasty, high school hallway style fight! fight! fight!
Booker lost in 2002, then came back in 2006 and was elected with 70% of the vote. The lesson? If you want something badly enough, you have to be ready to fight for it. Check it out here.
Today’s Artist: Joel Ortiz
We need more artists like Joel Ortiz. Like Will.I.Am and Steve Connell, Ortiz pays his tithe to the populace by putting political passion in his poetry (say it three times fast) and if words are actions, Ortiz is flowing his way to a new democracy.
The most important thing we can learn from activist artists is this: if we’re speaking our truth, the way we see it and the way we live it, then our unique voices are beautiful, and the picture we paint in air, in our ears, is a blueprint for a better world. Ortiz ID’s himself as a hustler for change, and we owe it to the man to ask him to step up with us and march a beat of progressive feats in the streets.
I think we can offer 13th grade, a prep-year experience, to those in the city via the new I.B. High to be placed at Peabody.
See this blog post:
http://rauterkus.blogspot.com/2009/01/ib-high-should-have-13th-year-component.html
“It’s Friday in America. Back in the day, Friday was a number one favorite day to skip school, go cruising with friends (who would all skip too, no repercussions), have lunch out, and start a nice long hazy three day weekend.”
O, the good days. You take me way back Kung Pao.