Teachers, what’s your focus?
Sometimes the difference between a superior monarch photo and a just-ok one can be a leaf in the foreground: it, not the butterfly, grabs the camera’s automatic focus and also blocks part of the view.
Great teachers notice the foreground, but do not let it obscure their focus: the beauty of their students.
In this series, Texas politicians created a system where they provide a traditional serving of strawberry cheesecake ice cream for all K-12 age children 180 days a year, and then added a state provided ice cream of your choice (charter cream), and homemade ice cream (no state financial support).
So, is everyone happy? No.
And that’s OK with politicians.
Why?
First, only two people need to be happy in this story, and you, in all likelihood, are not one of them.
Second, a broken system allows two things to happen for a politician, they are good for the politician, and maybe not so good for ice cream lovers. They are:
Politics can be ugly.
Texas K-12 Public School Teachers do not understand that type of ugly, because, in part, their minds and hearts, when they enter their classrooms, are about caring; ugly isn’t a part of their professional lives, and that makes it nearly impossible for them to understand the political processes that shape their environment.
Let’s say that the State of Texas is constitutionally required to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of free strawberry cheesecake ice cream to all K-12 age children.
The State of Texas takes it a step further and compels by law that all K-12 age children eat a healthy portion of the strawberry cheesecake ice cream every day for 180 days of the year.
That’s all good and well, if you like strawberry cheesecake ice cream.
But what if you don’t like the one state-provided, mandated frozen dessert? That’s a problem. And it’s a problem on two different levels: personal and political.
At the personal level, you, for any number of reasons, may not like strawberry cheesecake ice cream, and at the political level only politicians, not you, can make desired changes.
After much time and political wrangling, the State of Texas gives its citizens two additional choices: homemade ice cream (you’re on your own) and a state-provided charter ice cream (i.e., almost any flavor one cares to create).
Everyone wins.
Everyone is happy.
Unfortunately, not everyone wins, nor is everyone is happy, and as illogical as this may sound, that’s just fine with the government.
Why? The answers are with Part III.
I like strawberry cheesecake ice cream.
Not everyone likes strawberry cheesecake ice cream and no matter how much I may evangelize for this tasty dessert there will always people who, for any number of reasons, will not like it, and/or for any number of reasons will prefer another option, say for this writing, blueberry ice cream.
I believe in Texas’s K-12 public schools.
Not everyone believes in Texas’s K-12 public schools and no matter how much I or others may evangelize for this form of schooling there will always be people who, for any number of reasons, will not like it and/or will prefer other schooling options.
The promulgation of the good and great things that happen in Texas’s K-12 public schools while necessary only addresses one very slim slice of an equation: why not to not like Texas’s public schools. Left unaddressed are the many reasons why people do not like or are dissatisfied with this schooling option (their validity is not a subject of this writing) and why other schooling options are preferred.
It’s important, good, healthy, and necessary to promote the wonders of Texas’s K-12 public schools, but do not be disheartened if it does not create many converts – especially in the ranks of politicians – because the message, by the nature of that which it addresses, is not capable of doing that.
It’s Feb 26, 2018, in North Texas and the bees are out and about doing their thing ahead of a couple of days of rainy weather.
