Why Educators can’t vote for Pat McCrory
Today someone very close to me took advantage of early voting and voted for Pat McCrory for Governor of North Carolina. I stood, taking it in, breathing deep and finally asked “Why?” The answer? “He’s a business man.” This is true. He is a businessman. The downside is that he isn’t a very good businessman. I’m using another North Carolinian as an example. Jim Goodnight. Jim Goodnight is the owner of SAS, one of the world’s largest software companies. He’s also the richest man in North Carolina (I have nothing to back this up, I think I’ve just heard it). His employees, upon becoming employees, go through rigorous training, work strange hours sometimes, and have unlimited sick days. Yet the turnover rate is less than 4% per year, and the average employee takes 2 sick days. THe focus is on longevity. Getting someone in there for the long haul. The best way to keep an employee for the long haul is to work really hard at the beginning in training them. The way we take our kindergartners and work them to the bone on where to put their backpack in the morning, how to line up for lunch and when it’s appropriate to put their hands on another student (um, mostly never). I’ve had parents ask me why we do that. Spend so much time on routines instead of jumping into teaching them. And my answer is always the same, “If they don’t know what our expectations of them are, they will not be able to learn in this environment.” It’s all about education. We are frontloading our little ones in the hopes that by the time they read upper grades we won’t have to go over how to line up for lunch. McCrory is not an educator. Which is fine. BUT he is against education. Which tells me he isn’t a good businessman. It tells me he doesn’t realize that the children he refused to educate in Charlotte are going to be the same ones he’ll be complaining about in fifteen years when they start asking for welfare checks. It tells me he doesn’t think that children who come from middle class families are worth exerting time and energy on. EDUCATION is the ONLY service provided that, if done properly, guarantees a more successful human being. Educated children grow up to have a much lower rate of teen pregnancy, lower rate of dropping out of high school, are more likely to attend higher education, and are more likely to bring in the median income. They are less likely to end up in prison (why doesn’t anyone talk about the enormous cost of containing men behind barbed wire fences and controlling their every move 24 hours a day?), they are less likely to ask for public support, they are less likely to end up on disability, and are more likely to work through to retirement age. The bigger question is: How long will this take? Answer: A While. We should start educating our children before they are 5, and their base education should continue on until they are about 18. So you are talking about 12 years of public schooling, plus a little extra thrown in on the front end- Big Bird, for instance. If we vote in people who don’t understand that the most successful businesses are built upon educated people, then what are we doing to ourselves? Are we saying that we can’t be successful? That we don’t trust our children to be successful? Quick Stats: Average cost of sending a child to public school per year: $10, 615 Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/21/155515613/how-much-does-the-government-spend-to-send-a-kid-to-school Average cost over a 12 year period: $139, 480 Average cost of prisons (These numbers are based on a 2010 figure): in NC: $1, 204, 667.00, Total for 40 states willing to release the data: $38,903,304.00 Average annual cost of prisoner in NC (2010): $29,965 That is almost 3 times what it costs to educate a student over a year. And, of course, that is not taking into account the much higher costs of incarcerating inmates on death row or in solitary confinement. My question for Pat McCrory is: HOW IS THAT GOOD BUSINESS? Second Issue? Environment. Third Issue? Libraries. Coming soon.
I was saying just this morning – when did bragging about credentials that have nothing to do with the job you're "applying for" become a good idea? I keep hearing – "I'm not a politician, I'm a businessman" from people running for a job in politics. It's like someone trying to get a job as a builder saying "I'm not a builder, I'm a dentist" in an interview, and thinking that's somehow going to help them get a job.