Accentuate the positive,
eliminate the negative
latch on to the affirmative . . .
Don't mess with Mister In-between!
It's an old, old story--numbers versus quality--and just about the only question it raises is whether it's worth telling still again. For while figures don't lie, liars still figure. Or just reduce all their stats and graphs and pie charts to irrelevance or, far worse, a distraction from what matters in education: not the graduation rates but whether the graduates are educated. Or just fill seats and/or the slots on tables of organization and equipment of the state's businesses and bureaucracies.
Yet it all made front-page news Monday, May 2:
State colleges seek to raise graduation rates/23.6 percent to finish in four years, 39.7 percent in six years, data show.
But the more the data change, the more it remains the same, for the state's 10-year graduation rate has remained the same for the past five years. The same 42 percent of first-time students still take a whole decade to graduate, not educate. There's a difference between the two, or at least used to be. Got all that? And if so, why bother?
It's not an easy truth to live with, but an educated fool is still a fool, though he can be a lot more dangerous. Examples abound in politics as in life. Consider the namesake of the Fulbright Scholarships, one of the best ideas in American history, yet he was also the originator of one of the worst--like the notion that Harry S. Truman, the Man from Independence himself, should simply step aside instead of going on to win it and the hearts of his countrymen in one of the great upsets of the country's political history. Not that the Chicago Tribune noticed. "Dewey defeats Truman" said its headline even before the stunning results were in. Detente, a polite name for defeat, was another of Senator Fulbright's brainstorms, earning him Harry Truman's unforgettable sobriquet for him, Senator Half-Bright.
Ah, well, we all have our good points and bad, not to mention all those in between. One of the more enduring traits of our national character is our good intentions, even if it's said the road to hell is paved with them.
Who ever regretted doing the right thing that turned out wrong? Which is far better than starting out wrong in the first place. Examples of that kind of moral misjudgment abound--not just in education but in life.
If any more superfluous data were needed to back up all these conclusions about education the state's Department of Higher Education and General Fiddle-Faddle is sure to go on churning it out like so much sausage.
But it was also the state and people of Arkansas who placed 603 unaccompanied kids who had made the long and torturous journey up from Central America in our homes and hearths. !Bienvenidos a los Estados Unidos de America!
We're glad to have you here, and look forward to the day when one of you, now all grown up, cures cancer, maps the stars, or does something even better--just as the offspring of other immigrants have accomplished much before you. Ad Astra! To the stars! For this was, is, and surely will remain the land of opportunity--for all. Whether our ancestors arrived on the Mayflower or slave ships.
It's a great thing, freedom, libertad, freiheit, svoboda . . . Every language seems to have a word for it, and if not, needs one. Man is not meant to be enslaved, no matter what our supposed betters tell us. What a magnificent pageant, American history. And it's sure to be continued.
Editorial on 05/05/2016