Everyday, I drive to school pissed off.

etching by Garret Hogan, class of 2007

I wrote the following several months ago and never blogged it.  I still feel the things I say in it, so decided to complete the process and post it; maybe this way I can drive to school only half pissed (actually, two years later, not at all pissed, since, in part, probably a large part, due to this blog, I no longer drive there). A few things have changed though, in fact and in my thoughts.  In fact: Mark Sanford is no longer a viable candidate for any political office; though he will soon be replaced by one more asshole of the same ilk.  And in thought: I no longer believe that middling mediocre educators and administrators actually ever get pink slips.

...Been thinking about writing to President Obama about how and how much money he should earmark for education in this country; but every time I start, I hit a wall.  The amount needed to boost education to the utopian levels imagined by those who see education as a way to propel this nation into a future worthy of utopia is astronomical, on the order of what we spend on defense; and no politician will ever commit to that.  Politicians who intone the word “education” mostly pay lip service to it in order to attract a constituency of people who think they care about it, but who, in reality, are unwilling to pay what it would cost to really propel education into the 21^st century.  And although some parts of this nation might resemble Athens, most of it is content to remain Sparta.

I happen to be involved with education in one of our more Spartan of states, South Carolina.  I also happen to be an educator in what seems to be a contradiction in terms: The South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities.  Believe you me, putting the words “South Carolina”, “Arts” and “Humanities” together is tantamount to putting matter and anti-matter together.  I am always surprised to see the place intact when I drive to work, for, by now, I would have thought it would have been obliterated by it’s mere existential contradiction.  Though, finally, what it seems the “laws of nature” have left alone, given the excuse of our present recession, our overlords in the legislature are more than willing to take on.

I have worked at the SCGSAH (not even its acronym exists comfortably) since its inception.  I’ve seen it go from dream, to nascent creative institution full of ideals, to a semi-functional space where institutional thinking kept threatening to stifle the creativity within; and now, perhaps, I am witnessing the final extinguishing of all creative freedom left within what I can only think of as a miracle.  A miracle because of the beauty I have seen created there over the years, and because of the children I have seen grow up into intelligent, creative and responsible adults, and because of the true sense of community that exists in the place, one without the jingoism engendered by something like football or the trappings of religion.  But mostly, a miracle because within those walls, education, in the truest sense of the word, has actually been happening for ten years.  And it has been happening in the anti-education state of South Carolina.  It has been happening because creative, under-paid people who love what they do were given the chance to share what they love with students who were eager to learn and who understood that what they were getting was special.

The only people who don’t understand what it takes to foster real education seem to be those who are paid the most to oversee it; administrators and legislators.  They often commit the grievous error of basing their decision-making solely on inputs without ever looking at output; thus they rule with a heavy hand, never making the effort to understand what the place they are supposed to help flourish actually produces.  Their strategy is short-sighted and is a sure way of guaranteeing failure. Granted, that which a school for the arts produces is not so easy to quantify for people who are not willing to invest some time into understanding it; and most legislators, together with a great deal of administrators, aren’t.  However, the millions of dollars in grants and scholarships that our student body is offered every year should be an indication to somebody in this god-forsaken state that what we produce is valued by somebody, somewhere in less Spartan places on the face of this earth.  A good administrator of a good art school is one that shields the creative process within from the uncreative forces without; not one that tries to micro-manage the inputs to fit the stifling vision of middling politicians.

This recession has taken its toll on everything and everybody.  And with the slowdown of economic growth, states have been forced to reduce expenditures; and, understandably (in terms of numbers, not sentiment), the education sector has been hit particularly hard. With an average unemployment rate of 11.4% , and with some counties registering it at 23%, the state of South Carolina has suffered a pretty big blow.  Of course, these numbers are, in large part, a reflection of our lackadaisical attitude towards educating our populace (see An Honest to Goodness Rave). And squeezing schools, even in bad times, seems to be a sure way of maintaining the status quo so that when the next recession comes around, we can find ourselves in the exact same place.

I truly understand the necessity for expenditure reduction in lean times.  And I know that The South Carolina Governor School for the Arts and Humanities, in its heyday, was lucky enough to be extremely well funded.  And though, in the view of some, it was too well funded, witnessing what I have in this school over the years, I have come to believe that level of funding to be exactly what is necessary to propel this nation into a viable future.  I do, however, understand how our budget needed to be cut back in order to meet the pressures of the times; and it has been, a lot.  And although I keep hoping this to be a temporary state of affairs, I know it is a permanent one; this is not an education friendly state, once it taketh, it does not giveth back easily.  And from what I can glean, it plans to keep on taking....

Up to now, the administration had done a good job of reducing expenditures while trying to maintain the core of the program intact.  The core being that which was developed by individual departments in order to produce the output we were charged to produce, and which we have proven time and time again that we are capable of producing under all kinds of external pressures.  For a while, it seemed that the administration, under pressure of a Governor that seems to be using the current crisis to shut down a school he sees as a waste of tax-payer money, was not going to cave in and micro-manage our curriculum and teaching practices.  Well, those heady days are over. The administration, fearful for its own survival, has finally decided to step in and squeeze inputs to the point where quality output might be impossible.  If this is the case, they will be throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.  They will be destroying the whole raison d’etre of and that which makes the SCGSAH a special place.  Without the core curriculum we developed, the viability of the school gets put into doubt; and with this kind of decision-making, the administration might be signing its own pink slips.

...God forbid Mark Sanford ever becomes president of this nation; if that happens we will be clamoring for the good old days of Bush’s compassionate conservatism...

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.
Abraham Lincoln

Without the freedom to criticize, there is no true praise. -Pierre Beaumarchais, playwright (1732-1799)