It was a fine decision in its time, Lake View School District No. 25 v. Huckabee, and a much needed one if Arkansas was going to fulfill its constitutional duty to provide an equitable and adequate system of public schools for all of its students. But that was circa 2006, more than a decade ago, and time marches on. Or just staggers on when this state finds it can no longer afford to keep pace with time and circumstances, which wait for no man or woman.
This state's governor and educator-in-chief, The Hon. Asa Hutchinson, recognized as much when he told an advisory committee the other day: "We've been going down a path in terms of facility funding that needs to be adjusted." And how. Having spent about $3.2 billion on school buildings, with about a third of it coming from state government, should have proven quite an education in itself at that expensive rate. Especially for Governor Hutchinson, who's concluded: "You've got to think about how do people learn today differently, and how should facilities be adjusted to be more efficient in light of how people learn. We can't sustain that [rate of spending] every year after we meet the needs of our state whenever you take $100 million of growth money, of new money, and say it's going into facilities."
The big box theory of education gave way some time ago to the big blogosphere, where all those seeking an education can trade ideas and advance at their own pace, if not a faster one set by their peers, teachers and software engineers. Brad Montgomery, who directs this state's Division of Public School Academic Facilities, says he's been hearing the governor make this same criticism of the state's priorities in public education for a while now. After all, why build more schools if the roads to those schools haven't been built or have been allowed to fall into disrepair? For a student sitting in front of his computer now has access to more information than his counterpart a century ago might have envisioned even in his wildest dreams.
"We'll have to roll up our sleeves and try our best," says Mr. Montgomery. But the job requires more than just putting extra effort into doing the same outdated thing. As the times and circumstances are new, and they always are, educators and those who work with them must think anew and act anew. It's part of being conservative in the best, most practical sense, and marks the difference between a constructive conservative and a plain reactionary. The true conservative knows how to make haste slowly, not abruptly, and take stock at every step of the way to make sure he's advancing, not retreating into some legendary past that never was and will never be except in right-wing fairy tales, which are just as unattainable as the delusions entertained by their counterparts on the left.
Change happens, and it can result in simply reversing the positions of all those it affects. Remember, there was a time when the Arkansas Delta was considered the wealthiest, most promising part of the state while the far northwestern segment of the state was being written off as hopeless. The planters, with their pretensions to being Old South aristocrats, built mansions complete with antebellum columns and a host of poor folks to help them. But they seem to have learned better by now, educated by that most effective of teachers: experience. And defeat. The economic positions of the two parts of the state, mountain and deep South, have switched. But both still have at least this much in common: By their buildings ye shall know them.
Editorial on 07/31/2017