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May 2011
A QUESTION OF VALUES
This year the Yankton School District, along
with many other districts across this state, was
faced with a severe budget crisis due to South
Dakota Governor Dennis Duaggard’s decimating
budget cuts to South Dakota’s public education
system.
Evidently, with all the tax exemptions the state
of South Dakota allows for big business
(predatory money lenders, dirty oil refineries,
etc.) South Dakota cannot afford to educate its
youth anymore.
Or could it be that the powers that be in South
Dakota do not want an educated populace?
Those who have the facts about climate change
and pollution would likely oppose dirty oil.
Those who can apply basic math would likely not
fall for the tactics of predatory money lenders.
Am I cynical enough to believe that the power
brokers in this state are happy creating
generation after generation of worker bees?
At one time, the Constitution of South Dakota
guaranteed that South Dakota would fund
education based on a formula that would create
promise in this state. Our Republican-dominated
congress decided, though, that they could simply
rewrite the law, so the governor could fund (or
not) education as he pleased.
Am I cynical enough to believe that there is more
at work to the under-funding of education than
simple financial worries?
If I were in a cynical mood I might suggest that
because the powers that be can’t change all those
tricky facts being taught in school -- science,
math, history -- they simply under-fund
education, so all those tricky facts cannot be
taught effectively…
The more vitriolic, mindless right-wing
rhetoric would make me believe as much.
In the end, the under-funding of education is a
moral issue.
When education is underfunded, the very moral
fiber of the community wastes away.
Modern child-developmental theory tells us that
moral development closely follows cognitive
development.
In other words, children and adolescents who do
not rise to higher and higher cognitive levels
will not rise to higher and higher moral levels.
Children fall behind in cognitive and moral
development when classrooms are overstuffed,
when teachers are overwhelmed, when academic
and extracurricular programs are cut. (Just look
at any failed or failing school system in the U.S.)
If that’s not enough, note the demographics of
prison populations.
The best indicator of who goes to prison is not
religious affiliation (the majority of prisoners in
the U.S. are Christian) nor race or ethnicity (that
is, when disparities in the justice system are
taken into account – i.e. minorities being
punished more harshly for the same crimes
Whites commit.)
The best indicator of who goes to prison is based
upon education level.
People who commit crimes tend to be
undereducated, tend to come from communities
where school systems have failed for lack of
funding.
I understand that times are tight, but why not go
after the source of our financial woes—the
banking industry, big business, the military-
industrial complex?
A small minority of wealthy people nearly ran
this country into the ground and got even richer
by doing so…these same people are trying to
convince us that the answer becomes taking even
more from those who are powerless defend
themselves—children who need a good education.
These young people are the same people who can
help make a better future for our community,
our state, our nation, and the world if given the
chance…but a small and vocal minority would
not give those youth a chance.
In the end, we cannot make future generations
pay for our mistakes.
m.c. merrill
A QUESTION OF VALUES
This year the Yankton School District, along
with many other districts across this state, was
faced with a severe budget crisis due to South
Dakota Governor Dennis Duaggard’s decimating
budget cuts to South Dakota’s public education
system.
Evidently, with all the tax exemptions the state
of South Dakota allows for big business
(predatory money lenders, dirty oil refineries,
etc.) South Dakota cannot afford to educate its
youth anymore.
Or could it be that the powers that be in South
Dakota do not want an educated populace?
Those who have the facts about climate change
and pollution would likely oppose dirty oil.
Those who can apply basic math would likely not
fall for the tactics of predatory money lenders.
Am I cynical enough to believe that the power
brokers in this state are happy creating
generation after generation of worker bees?
At one time, the Constitution of South Dakota
guaranteed that South Dakota would fund
education based on a formula that would create
promise in this state. Our Republican-dominated
congress decided, though, that they could simply
rewrite the law, so the governor could fund (or
not) education as he pleased.
Am I cynical enough to believe that there is more
at work to the under-funding of education than
simple financial worries?
If I were in a cynical mood I might suggest that
because the powers that be can’t change all those
tricky facts being taught in school -- science,
math, history -- they simply under-fund
education, so all those tricky facts cannot be
taught effectively…
The more vitriolic, mindless right-wing
rhetoric would make me believe as much.
In the end, the under-funding of education is a
moral issue.
When education is underfunded, the very moral
fiber of the community wastes away.
Modern child-developmental theory tells us that
moral development closely follows cognitive
development.
In other words, children and adolescents who do
not rise to higher and higher cognitive levels
will not rise to higher and higher moral levels.
Children fall behind in cognitive and moral
development when classrooms are overstuffed,
when teachers are overwhelmed, when academic
and extracurricular programs are cut. (Just look
at any failed or failing school system in the U.S.)
If that’s not enough, note the demographics of
prison populations.
The best indicator of who goes to prison is not
religious affiliation (the majority of prisoners in
the U.S. are Christian) nor race or ethnicity (that
is, when disparities in the justice system are
taken into account – i.e. minorities being
punished more harshly for the same crimes
Whites commit.)
The best indicator of who goes to prison is based
upon education level.
People who commit crimes tend to be
undereducated, tend to come from communities
where school systems have failed for lack of
funding.
I understand that times are tight, but why not go
after the source of our financial woes—the
banking industry, big business, the military-
industrial complex?
A small minority of wealthy people nearly ran
this country into the ground and got even richer
by doing so…these same people are trying to
convince us that the answer becomes taking even
more from those who are powerless defend
themselves—children who need a good education.
These young people are the same people who can
help make a better future for our community,
our state, our nation, and the world if given the
chance…but a small and vocal minority would
not give those youth a chance.
In the end, we cannot make future generations
pay for our mistakes.
m.c. merrill
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