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Baloney

January 27, 2015

When I was in high school and college I worked a different job each summer, usually looking for hard labor that would help prepare my body for the next football season, and each time confirming that it would not be my choice for lifetime employment. One summer I worked at a lumber yard and paper mill complex along the banks of the Wisconsin River.

Every day I ate lunch with the men who had made this their life’s work; and I grew in ways both positive and negative as I listened to their conversations and tales. We all brought our own lunch pails.

One day, one of the more veteran employees opened his lunchbox and flew into a rage. “I can’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “Baloney again! I hate baloney.”

Trying to calm him down, another worker said, “If you hate baloney so much, just ask your wife to make you something else.”

To which the complainer replied, “That won’t work. I make my own lunches,” which resulted in an uproar of laughter from the rest of us.

I thought of this incident recently as I was preparing to meet with constituents about the rules they most love to hate: policies relating to coach and player contact out of season. Those are our most criticized rules.

But it occurs to me, if we don’t like the sandwich we’re eating – out-of-season coaching rules – we should remember: we made them ourselves, and we can change them. In fact, no one is in a better position to do so than we are. And no one has a greater duty to do so than we have, if we really are in need of a new recipe.

Newcomer Wisdom

November 20, 2012

A group I work with in my spare time, the Refugee Development Center, sponsored a team in a local youth soccer league.  Appropriately, the team’s nickname is “Newcomers.”

It took the team most of the season to score a goal; and it was in its final game of the season that the team earned its first victory.

After one game, I was enlisted to transport three players to their residences.  All three were Napali.  I used this time to ask their opinions about the education they were receiving in the local public school.

They had no objection to the content of the courses, but criticized the conduct of their classmates.  They cited a lack of respect for teachers, and a lack of discipline.  They had experienced the discipline of the stick in their homeland, and believed it would be helpful to classrooms in the US.

These young newcomers also noted that their instructional day in Nepal was almost two hours longer, plus they were in school a half-day on Saturdays.

From this conversation I was once again impressed that much of what has been done in attempts to improve public education has overlooked the obvious:  stronger discipline and longer days.  Most of what we do in US public education is the envy of the world.  What people from other countries wonder about is the lack of discipline and time on task. 

Empowering and supporting teachers’ discipline and increasing the length of the school day and year are not sexy solutions to what ails public education.  They are just simpler answers mostly overlooked.