For some reason, South Carolina pols are incapable of keeping educational buildings clean and in good repair.

I did some educational outreach in a predominantly African American middle school in peninsular Charleston, SC the late 1990s and the girls' room had no toilet seats, toilet paper or paper towels. The teacher kept a roll of toilet paper on his/her desk, and you took a few sheets with you before you left the room.

Somehow, the students were cheerful and hopeful, expressing interest in studying law and computer science, among other subjects.

I wish the principals and school board members used the restrooms that the students did.

See I wish to work with messages like yours Belle, and put them in the context of this new Christian Declaration thingy noted by Jesse today.

See. I would bet that most of the voters and reps and pols over that way in SC are good gun totin bible thumpin folks.

AND THEY LET CRAP LIKE THIS GO ON AND ON AND ON.

And like Sanford, so many times on cable, he'd say something like:

Well, we would like to help, but there is no money right now. So we must wait.

Like it does not matter what issue he is addressing. I mean 20% actual unemployment in his staate with a quarter of those unemployed getting benefits.

Like, sure babies will die, pregnant women will have strokes, and an actual measureable portion of the population is going to be down to about 1000 calories a day, but we must WAIT until the economy picks up.

I mean I know there are Federal Funds available to fix our schools and roads and hospitals and stuff...but NOW IS NOT A GOOD TIME.

See Belle, I have trouble controlling myself when I think of issues like this.

I HATE THOSE PEOPLE.

THE END

I agree with that Molly. I think the real beauty of Sinclair's program is that it gets everyone involved -- not just architects -- so that, in the end, it doesn't matter so much what the school itself or classrooms look like, but that in the process barriers were broken down among previously hostile factions, so that -- dare I say it -- communication occurs that can smooth the path from need to funding to implementation. But please let those schools, no matter what they look like, be toxin free and clean.
Ad, as you point out, it is vital that a school's administratice structure support teaching and learning. It has been a shock to me to realize how infrequently that is true, in both public and private schools.
Thanks for your obviously informed input.

Schools teach kids how to fish. Prepare kids to support themselves and you will not have to support them when they become adults. Frankly, I believe the education issue stems from uneducated parents fearful that their kids will be smarter then they are, rather then encouraging their kids to be smarter then they are. A well-raised child does support his parents in their old age, or at least can help them find the resources.

Gregor: have you actually encountered parents who do not want their children to be at least as well-educated as they are themselves? Or who openly admit it?

Thanks for the link to the article W. Some may argue that learning can be accomplished as well anyplace that is not too dangerous, small, dark, etc., but I suppose in the end, once all practical considerations have been met, this can be further refined into subtle aesthetic considerations. I've often been struck by the effect of environment on my own learning and thought. At university, I used to enjoy sitting in the beautifully designed library annex to study and think. I can't say whether the quality of my thought improved as a result, but just the pleasure I derived from sitting in an aesthetically pleasing place made it more likely I would endeavor to think at all. When a place of learning does not possess at least some of those qualities that subtly encourage reflection, both intellectual and personal, we inadvertently bypass much of our own potential.

I couldn't get your link to the article to work as it is missing the html tag at the end. Here is a functioning link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cameron-sinclair/aspen-ideas-festival-arne_b_224593.html

Thank you wwstaebler for this discussion, a lot of important thoughts brought forward.I wonder though why would Sanford reject stimulus money when there is so much need for the children of South Carolina? He should have put them first above party or politics as he was elected to do. Do you have to be a criminal to be a politician now days? I hope your state takes the money and uses it for the schools, for necessities and not sports arenas like the good ole boy boosters will want. I hope also that the smaller schools get some help and all the stimulus doesn't go to the bigger spotlight schools.Thanks again for speaking up.

Of those I have seen FDRdog, because all public schools are integrated, the demarcation is not race per se, but a combination of poverty and rural location. But you raise a valid point, as there are more African Americans who are poor in any area of SC -- urban suburban or exurban -- than there are whites.
That said, black mold and asbestos do not recognize color; for the children who attend these schools, they are equal opportunity toxins.

I read in one of Sanford's emails that he took his family to China, Nepal and other Asian places as part of a "trade mission." I would like to see what commerce was generated from that trip for South Carolina and its pathetic schools. My guess is "nada."

Meantime, I'm sure they flew first class, stayed in the best hotels, and were treated like royalty. Then he comes back and refuses stimulus money because he would have to use it to create things and he only wanted to use it to pay down state debt (like from ridiculous junkets).

He can screw every woman in Argentina for all I care; he just should stop screwing the people of South Carolina and then maybe he could keep his job.

Nice post, wwstaebler.

The situation in South Carolina has a lot of local inhibitions against putting a "value" on general education. I don't live there so I shouldn't go into that stuff. But the state also shares consequences that have emerged from the general anti-tax movement that has been the essential component to the conservative movement over the last four decades.

An important milestone for the movement was the passing of Proposition 13 in California in 1978. As the link discusses, there have been positive and negative results for the Californian economy as a result of passing the bill. But the thing not discussed in that discussion is the effect such a policy has on State Schools. Those schools went from being number one to roll another number in a pretty direct correlation to the budget they didn't have anymore. The question for me is how the matter of education gets left out of certain discussions. It is not like everyone got together and said "education sucks." If education wasn't explicitly devalued, what happened?

I think the answer has to do with a previous generation's really really bad experience with central planning. Hayek's demonstrations of how a rudderless market could be more creative than a room of geniuses is a powerful motif. But in the gathering clouds of the Contract On America, the criticism became a credo. The limited horizon of a person's value in the market at any given point in time is greater than what could be established by a poorly executed attempt at some universal program. Better to be spanked by the invisible hand than be lorded over by the designated Spanker; Etcetera.

Education is the activity that these sort of beliefs have the greatest difficulty maintaining self certainty. Education requires a large horizon. It accepts that a program is needed to create institutions that will work in the future.

All the fundamental changes that have happened in our society are a direct result of changes in who and how people learned things. If the cultural wars are supposed to be a disagreement about whether that is true or not, then we have taken a large step back from the nineteenth century. On alternate days, I wake up believing that this step backwards has taken place.