Education and General Wayne...again, today's JG rants

How does that old saying go? Oh yeah, “When someone says it is not about the money, you can be sure about one thing, it’s all about the money.” So it is with Jennifer McCormick when she says, “I know it’s not all about the money, but it’s hard to operate school systems without adequate and equitable resources.”  Adequate resources?  She cannot be serious. 

I could teach my son basic math, to read and write with next to no “resources” at my kitchen table.  The public schools have one job.  They are failing at it miserably. Failure never leads to a change of leadership. It never causes anyone to challenge an antiquated centuries old education paradigm.  Failure only leads the establishment to call for reinforcing their failure with the allocation of more “resources.”

There’s an old military axiom that goes, “Never reinforce failure.”  If the main attack is failing, do not commit your reserve force to that failure.  Somehow this common sense approach alludes us when it comes to education.  The education establishment resemble the Chateau Generals of WW I who, while sipping fine wine and dining on Foie gras, met each defeat and setback with the insane call to “send more troops to the front.”  The worse the result in public education the louder the demand for “more resources.”

Nothing demonstrates the failed idiotic approach to public education better than Mitch Daniels’ push “to get every Indiana student prepared for a four-year college track.”  Why not push to get every Indiana student prepared to play in the NFL.  Those two goals have the exact same likelihood of success.

Combine Daniels’ idiocy with this nugget of foolishness from McCormick, “Our customer in K-12 is the child” and you begin to understand the problem.   No.  The child is not the customer.  The customer of public education is the taxpayer, our society and public and private employers. 

The goal of public education should be, at a minimum, to produce high school graduates capable of protecting and participating in the democratic process in an informed fashion, securing liberty and the American culture for future generations and producing graduates prepared to enter the work force at whatever level their individual talent allows them.

Once the education establishment decides that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing educating children will become a rather straight forward process. 

Schools chief sounds alarm on public's loss of control

The state's last elected superintendent of public instruction is not leaving office quietly. With just more than 20 months left in her four-year term, Jennifer McCormick is on a mission to warn Indiana voters of the immense power over education legislators just handed off to the governor's office.

In a presentation to more than 100 parents and educators at Ivy Tech Community College's Coliseum campus Thursday, the schools chief described the state's current system of school governance, what it will become in 2021 and why Hoosiers should begin paying closer attention. 

“What we're going to have is not the norm,” McCormick said, describing oversight of preschool education through higher education. “In most states, somewhere in here, beyond the governor's office – is your voice. In most states, it's either the state board (of education) is elected, or the state superintendent goes through confirmation by those who are elected, maybe in the state senate. Indiana will be very, very, very top-heavy in one office, with a lot of control.”

McCormick, a Republican, spent more than an hour highlighting policy differences between the Department of Education she now oversees and the governor's office and like-minded education leaders in the General Assembly, beginning with views on school finance.

“I know it's not all about the money, but it's hard to operate school systems without adequate and equitable resources,” she said, citing numerous examples of funding proposals that shortchange public schools and a growing system of “haves and have-nots.”

“We're being told (science, technology, engineering and math education) is going to keep our state alive,” McCormick said. “So when we went to ask for STEM money – silly me – 'we've got a STEM plan, we've got a STEM council' – we need $20 million to minimally execute it. Your governor came out and your General Assembly and they are giving it $1 million; $2 million over the biennium.

“So let me get this straight – you're telling me how important STEM is to our state, and we're giving less than $1 per student per year?”

She also pointed out the disconnect between different leaders' objectives. Gov. Mitch Daniel pushed to get every Indiana student prepared for a four-year college track, she said. Now, under the Holcomb administration, the push is for workforce certifications and two-year college programs. 

“I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but we need to start saying our customer is not the workforce,” McCormick said to loud applause. “Our customer in K-12 is the child. You have to consider their ability, their passion.”

Some students will excel in career and technical programs, but not all students can be pushed in that direction, she said. Others will flourish in four-year college programs.

“We can't do this one thing or the other thing,” said the former YorktownCommunity Schools superintendent.“We've got to find this balance and keep our eyes on the prize. Our customer is that kid.”

The resistance McCormick's student-centered approach has faced from a governor and legislative supermajority of her own party are a telling sign of political forces not focused on students and public education. Her message to Hoosiers who care about both should not be dismissed. And candidates for state office next year must share a clear and complete vision for Indiana schools.

Paul C. Strack’s letter, “Wayne’s ‘heroics’ predicated on fraudulent land sales,” of April 26, 2019 may be true as far it goes, but one cannot assess the Northwest Indian War without noting the British and their loyal Indian allies’ failure to adhere to the terms of the Treaty of Paris that ceded British land claims in the territory all the way to the Mississippi.

The British not only did not vacate the ceded lands, they reinforced their existing forts and built a new one in what would become Oho.  A confederation of Indian tribes were supplied and encouraged by their British allies to harass colonials in the area leading the U.S. to send forces under General St. Clair to secure the territory.  The Indian confederation under British leadership annihilated St. Clair’s army, and in the process the savages massacred over 200 women and children camp followers.  

Enter our hero, General Anthony Wayne.  Wayne organized and led a force that crushed the Indian confederation in one decisive battle that ended the war and restored order to the territory.

Now 225 years later, in true loser’s fashion, the do-nothing armchair generals, who are in all likelihood unfit to survive a night under the conditions that Wayne thrived in, are pointing out where the strong man stumbled or came up a bit short by modern day standards.  That’s pathetic, but that’s today’s left.

Wayne's 'heroics' predicated on fraudulent land sales

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 declared that land title in the Northwest Territory belonged entirely to the native tribes living there. It went on to say those tribes could only sell that land to the U.S. government. It also stipulated the natives' ground could only be taken by voluntary sale or as the result of a “just war.”

In 1794, the year of Gen. Anthony Wayne's campaign, neither the U.S. nor any of its citizens owned land in the Northwest Territory. The Ohio Company and other similar schemes had been selling false title around the nation and Europe for years. So, those settling on the north side of the Ohio river were actually squatters (with or without bogus title).

The tribes refused offers to sell, and the U.S. government refused to act on tribal complaints about those settlements. As a result, the natives resorted to raiding to defend themselves, some of which was as Phillip Lacey described in his April 13 letter. The squatters complained bitterly to the government to intervene; after all, many of the prominent politicians of the day were the ones behind those bogus land sales in the first place.

What followed was that “just war,” pursued against the rightful possessors of this land rather than in their defense. At Greenville in 1795, Wayne demanded peace and most of what is now Ohio from the tribes. Settling only for peace would not have made those fraudulent land sales legitimate. Salute that all you want.

Paul C. Strack

Monroeville