Evidently not all days are created equal; at least there are those when I feel like I've accomplished absolutely nothing, no matter how hard the effort.
Of course, that isn't literally true, a point I'll return to in a moment.
***
But first, when I picked up my high-school freshman today, he told me about the upcoming rallies and demonstrations planned against impending cuts in the public school budgets here in California.
Only vaguely aware of this imminent controversy, partially because it so upsets me, I haven't wanted to know the details. The prospect of further scaling back on education here is appalling.
This a place where conservatives have long since ruined what was once a leading example of a state education system with the notorious Prop. 13 decades ago. California has since plunged from near the top of the states to near the bottom.
Now they want to finish the job. These are the type of fools who believe not in learning, but in ridiculous concepts like prayer in school, creationism, and anti-abortion propaganda. In other words, they do not care about knowledge or intellectual development at all.
They are creatures motivated by fear and parochialism. They fear anyone who is different, any idea that challenges their religious fantasies, any expenditure that does not conform to their own strict, narrow definition of what is right and proper.
All of this is too distressing for further words. Because as we've systematically uneducated Californians for decades now, many voters perceive little more than these purveyors of fear tell them to perceive.
The money is all on the wrong side in this case. The situation can only get worse under these conditions.
Of course, it is not conservatives who are precipitating the present crisis -- that is a consequence of the recession, which itself is a consequence of stupid foreign adventurism launched by the Bush administration combined with a historic transformation to a global economy, where we in the rich world must become used to a lower lifestyle in the future, for reasons both good and bad.
But it was the tax-cutters who laid the groundwork, who set us up for today's collapse of our schools. Thanks to them, our children face a more difficult path to gaining the type of education we once collectively believed they had a right to.
We don't collectively believe that in American any longer.
We don't collectively believe in anything here. Everyone is divided up into camps.
***
That was a highlight of my miserable day. Still recovering, I realize, from my winter illness, today was a day where my energy had been sucked out of my being before I even arose from bed.
Of course, everyone has such days, I'm sure.
Demands came at me from all sides; there was so little I could concretely do about any of them.
As the day proceeded, however, I did in fact accomplish a few small things, helped a few people, laid some future plans, met obligations best I could.
But I'm left tonight with an awful sense that this day was a failure. Thus, I am telling its story -- a failure of a day -- not to write it off but to share it in case this resonates with someone else, somewhere, who also had a bad day.
What is far worse, of course, is when we collectively have a bad day, and the day they cut the school budgets further will be exactly that kind of day for all of us, whether we agree on it or not.
-30-
1 comment:
While I didn't have a bad day yesterday, I appreciate your descriptions as they always resonate. And I especially feel kinship with your view of the California voter and education in particular. After almost 60 years, I left California. Part of the reason for this had to do with exactly what you are talking about. Beginning with Jarvis-Gann in 1978 and all the way up until the most recent voter atrocity on gay marriage, living in California and Berkeley in particular (as it has grown equally conservative, especially in cultural ways) became harder and harder on a daily basis. The accompanying violence as citizens inevitably turn on one another given the lack of any real assistance, made my last 10 years very difficult -- life became more robotic because it was a matter of waiting it out until my youngest daughter graduated from high school and I was free to leave. And my suspicions were correct -- there are, indeed, other states in the U.S. where the citizens perceive a different concept of education and general quality of life. While every single situation comes with some manner of positive and negative, there are indeed some places that are more negative than others, and California fell apart a long time ago. It will take the lifetimes of our children to fix it given the depth of its plunge. Unfortunately it's way beyond the cultural and political aspects of a right-wing agenda. Tamara
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