The President's Remarks

I may get in trouble for saying it, but I don’t hear anyone else saying it, and someone has to say it:  The whole thing about the Zimmerman verdict is that many black men have been executed in America on much less evidence than the people of Florida had against George Zimmerman.  Not only that, but many black men and women have been lynched without benefit of trial for petty crimes or no crimes.  If President Obama cannot address this issue, he should be quiet about the Zimmerman verdict and Florida law.  The prosecution had a weak case against Mr. Zimmerman, but many people consider that a lame excuse for his acquittal.

It is unreasonable to expect any president to repair a criminal justice system that is rigged against black males.  After all, it took Dwight D. Eisenhower – the man who had commanded the largest army in history and who had won the most decisive battle in history – to send federal troops to a high school in Little Rock so that some kids could attend classes without being burned alive.  It took Lyndon B. Johnson – a lifelong political wheeler-dealer – to push the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

When President Eisenhower sent the troops to Central High School he was enforcing a court ruling.  President Johnson needed a law to enforce to ensure that all citizens had equal access to the voting booth.  It is unreasonable to expect a president to solve our racial problems because that is the role of Congress and of the courts.  It is also the responsibility of us as individual citizens.  The president’s job is to enforce the decisions of Congress and the courts. 

If we do not like the decisions our government makes, we need to vote for or against people who run for offices other than President of the United States.  Many of our citizens do not understand the Three Branches of Government and the system of Checks and Balances between them.  They think of our president as The Big Boss who has to stand for election every four years.  This ignorance contributes to a too-powerful presidency.  The way I learned it in my high school civics class is that Congress makes the laws, the courts interpret the laws, and the president enforces the laws.

I can understand why President Obama felt compelled to speak.  He is a legal scholar and probably felt pressured to display some leadership.  But, George Zimmerman is now a free man and a private citizen.  Unless the president can announce a plan to address imbalances in the criminal justice system, it is inappropriate for him to voice his personal opinion on a specific case.  He cannot introduce a bill in the Florida legislature to change the Stand Your Ground statute there, so he should not say anything about that, either.  It is up to the voters and legislators in Florida to decide if they want to change that statute.  President Obama’s legal opinions can wait until he leaves office.  I cannot see how it can be useful for any president to comment on legal issues of which he can do nothing about.  It may lead to unrealistic expectations about what he can do to solve problems such as racial profiling.

Mandate Parental Involvement

I believe that I comprehend arguments both for and against adoption of the Common Core state standards.  Those in favor want to make sure that the quality of education that a child receives does not depend on where the child lives.  Those opposed fear federalized indoctrination of children and that local school boards will have responsibility without authority.  What surprises me is that most of the opposition to the adoption was not organized until most of the states had already adopted the standards.  Some educators predict that implementation of the standards next year will reveal how poorly we are educating our children.

The unspoken issue in debates about Common Core, No Child Left Behind and other education reform programs is lack of parental involvement.  This is the crisis in education.  There is plenty of work to be done to improve the teaching done by teachers in the United States, but there is much more work to be done to convince parents that the education of their children is their responsibility.  We hire teachers to help us with the time-consuming aspects of this responsibility, not to abandon this responsibility to them.

We can help teachers spend more time teaching reading and math by teaching our children to not bully each other, teaching them how to not be victims of bullying and teaching them to not disrupt their classes.  School systems throughout our nation are doing what they can to prevent bullying and provide character education programs, but this means that they are allocating resources for these programs that could be used for art, physical education or science.  In order to be a successful teacher, a teacher must know more about classroom management than any academic subject.

There are parents who do more than make sure their children do not make it more difficult for other children to learn.  They read to their children, have their children read aloud, do drills with flash cards and answer questions about homework.  Many of them are single parents.  We do not have enough such parents.  We have plenty of parents who are more interested in reality TV than reality.  Communicating with teachers can be inconvenient for parents, but it must be done.  A parent who cannot tutor a child can find resources for tutoring.

Perhaps the most important thing a parent can do is to show their children by example that education is important.  This means looking at report cards, making sure that homework assignments are completed and attending conferences with teachers whenever possible.  A child is much more likely to take education seriously if a parent takes education seriously.  American history is full of examples of poor children who grew up to be successful because they took advantage of a free education in the public schools.

But how do we mandate parental involvement?  Doing so might be more effective than all the reforms of the education system itself.  We need incentives for parents who educate their children and intervention for parents who fail to put in any effort.  We could start with letters, numbers, shapes and colors.  Children who cannot identify these things on the first day of Kindergarten should be classified as either neglected or learning disabled and appropriate plans made on their behalf.  Parents who teach these things to their children could attend subsidized college classes or given some other incentive.

We must do something.  Our present school system operates on the outdated premise that parents are eager and grateful for an opportunity for their children to receive an education.  The present reality is that many apathetic students have apathetic parents.  They are failing classes and dropping out in vast numbers.  We cannot expect teachers and administrators to provide motivation for these students.  That is the responsibility of parents.  Our world has become so complex that ignoring a child’s education amounts to child abuse.  An uneducated adult is unemployable and vulnerable to many kinds of exploitation.  Parents who do not attend to their children’s education should be just as answerable to charges of child abuse as parents who withhold food or beat their children.