Opinions
08/21/02
The True Citizen
P.O.Box 948
Waynesboro, GA 30830
(706) 554-2111
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Harold
Rowland
Little
Things Make A Difference
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The men handled it like this: “Woman, without her man, is nothing.”
All the women shared a common view. “Woman! Without her man is nothing.”
Massive things can hang on the placement of a comma or an exclamation point. In the law it could possibly be the difference between conviction or acquittal, life or death. The intended provisions of a contract could be hopelessly confused by a simple mistake in punctuation.
Any golfer knows that a fraction of an inch in alignment can be the difference in a great putt and a clean miss. From Simon and Schuster’s Words to Live By, come some wonderful insights from children. Six-year-old Paul Gandola reminded his father, “Every minute starts an hour.” Trite, simple, common knowledge? Sure it is. But how many minutes of our lives do we carelessly toss away with scarcely a nod?
As he was being tucked in for the night another 6 year old chastised his dad for forgetting to ask him what was the happiest thing that happened to him that day. When dad apologized and sat on the bed came the whisper, “Catching my first fish.” It takes years for something so apparently inconsequential to be fully appreciated. We weren’t much into fishing. In fact, my dad had to work most all the time. But I will never forget the first dove I brought down with my brand new L.C. Smith double.
I loved the story of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes being joined on a stroll by a little girl. As they parted company the distinguished judge said to the child, “When you get home, tell your mother that you were walking with Oliver Wendell Holmes.” The pert lassie responded, “And when you get home, tell your mother that you were walking with Mary Smith.”
The Saint Louis Cardinals played an exhibition game in a sleepy South Georgia town. A kid asked the famous Frankie Frisch and Pepper Martin for their autographs. Frisch smoothed out the paper bag that once held roasted peanuts and scribbled his name.
Martin spat tobacco juice that almost hit the boy and muttered, “Get your ass off the field, boy.” That slighted boy, Jimmy Carter, became the president of the United States and recalled the incident in his book, An Hour Before Daylight. I don’t know who may have been the better player but I sure know who was the bigger man.
Little things and little people are the very essence of life. Not many tremendous things happen to ordinary people, just a long series of very precious little things. Of all those things we touch and shape, none is more important than children. The teacher knew that and instructed us, “… of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Blacktop Driving
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I spent
last Saturday driving a statewide triangle from Waynesboro to Camilla to Macon
and back again. The goal had been to complete the trip in one day, but as
usual, things did not go as planned.
There is no easy way to get to Camilla, or really any portion of southwest
Georgia, from our side of the state. EBA folks can attest to this, as they’ve
had to make the trip to Camilla to face Westwood Academy.
While there are some big roads and highways to connect the larger cities like
Augusta, Savannah, Atlanta and Macon; the rest of the state is connected by
two-lane blacktops, not to mention its fair share of dusty dirt roads.
The highways, interstates and two-lanes of Georgia are travel routes I know
well. With family and friends spread from one corner of the state to another,
and having lived in numerous places, large and small, throughout Georgia;
I have spent a lot of hours driving or riding these roads.
When I was a child, I was amazed at the fact that my parents could just get
in the car and drive across the state to either set of grandparents’
homes and never once have to look at a map. I could not understand how people
were able to remember the criss-cross network of highways and byways.
I had assumed at an early age that the process was indeed difficult, as I
noted the heated arguments my parents could become involved in over directions
while confined to the tight spaces of the front seat. Later, when I turned
15, I became the family’s designated chauffeur on long trips and thus
I began to learn the roads myself.
I consider myself an excellent driver and I will attribute that to practice.
My father took advantage of every chance he had to put me behind the wheel,
especially if it meant he could take a nap while the miles passed by. He would
wake up occasionally to check our progress and tell me to speed up or slow
down, depending on the relationship between the trip’s ending and a possible
meal prepared by my grandmother. Rain, sleet, hail or snow – okay, so
maybe not snow – but certainly, the rest were no reasons to remove me
from the pilot’s seat. The more experience the better.
One day of experience that sticks out particularly well in my mind would be
Christmas Day 1991. I was 16 years old. My parents had divorced, and my father
was going to pick my brother and sister and I up in Macon for the drive to
my grandmother’s in Albany.
I barely recognized my father when he came to the door. He was sick, terribly
sick. Neither of my parents had ever been real big on going to the doctor
for everyday things. You had to be pretty close to death’s door in order
to skip school and certainly to account for spending half the day at the doctor’s
office. So, it was no surprise that my father had not been to the doctor,
a fact that would almost kill him over the following 24 hours.
While he was visibly sick, my father simply shrugged it off and told us to
load the car. We left my mother’s driveway and drove the mile or so to
the ramp for I-75 South. My father pulled over and looked at me, “It’s
your turn to drive,” he said, as a matter of fact. My father owned an
old five-speed Ford Bronco II. Even brand new off the lot, they were never
known for their excellent handling. Combine this with the fact that I could
not yet drive a stick shift and you could understand the look on my siblings’
faces when I caught their terrified stares in the rearview mirror.
My father explained the workings of the clutch and gas pedals as I coasted
down the on-ramp. The lesson ended when we reached the bottom. I proceeded
to grind through the gears, and the truck lurched and bounced down the road.
It was obvious my father was sick because he had little to say and gave me
few instructions during the drive.
As the years went by, I would gain more experience, most times in a less stressful
environment. Later, I took a summer job with the Georgia Forestry Commission
that required me to drive all over the state to look at trees. And just a
few years ago, I was a sometimes truck driver, delivering large loads of water-well
pipe and casing across middle Georgia. But then, both of those jobs are stories
unto themselves for another day.
contact
benr@thetruecitizen.com
The First Signs Of School Reform
State
School Superintendent Linda Schrenko has an unusual excuse for missing so many
State Board of Education meetings. She says she wasn’t present at several
meetings because she was involved in President George W. Bush’s education-reform
program. She was counseling Bush’s education experts and helping promote
the national “No Child Left Behind” Act.Judging by her answer to a question in a recent GPTV debate, one might believe she was an architect, or perhaps an assistant architect, of the proposal that President Bush initiated. That’s odd. Superintendent Schrenko is perhaps the severest critic of Gov. Roy Barnes’ education improvement plan. And Barnes’ efforts were copied directly from the ideas of G. W. Bush, as both president of the United States and when he was governor of Texas.
Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado, a current poster boy for the national GOP, is making headlines across the country with his education-reform activities, which are nearly identical to the enhancement proposals of Barnes and Bush.
If Schrenko is truth-telling, she abandoned the post to which she was elected in Georgia to be by the side of the angels in national education reform – yet she has blasted Barnes and his crew for copying a plan she helped formulate. Hmm. Of course, education reform has several facets. Schrenko has chosen to criticize the part dealing with “accountability,” which, in her publicly stated view, is just another word for “blame.” “Blaming the teachers because Johnny can’t read” – that’s just what ol’ Roy has done, according to Schrenko.
“Accountability” aside, the fierce GOP gubernatorial primary campaign has largely ignored the other parts of reform.
For instance:
•When the school bells rang a few weeks ago, shiny new classrooms and school buildings opened across the state. Additional facilities are under construction almost everywhere you look. Local boards of education are rightfully taking bows for the construction boom. But a good part of the expansion has been financed by a $501 million state appropriation – money added on top of the “normal growth” fund. School renovation and construction are a major part of education reform that the slam-bang political TV commercials don’t talk about much.
•Schools have smaller classes this fall. For the first time, kindergarten classes are limited to 22 kids with a parapro. Grades one through three have been scaled down to 24 with a parapro, 22 without. Some of those lower-grades’ teachers had been working in classes with more than 30 students each.
•More nurses have been added to every school system. Every system now also receives funding for technology specialists and school counselors.
•An additional $50 million in state and federal monies is being directed to reading programs.
•For students who need extra help, early intervention programs have been funded to provide one teacher for every 11 remedial students. Every system will receive funding for 10 percent of its students to attend after-school or summer programs.
These seeds of real reform or enhancement or whatever you want to call it are admittedly not the sexiest of topics. Superintendent Schrenko’s strident criticism is easily explained in the context of the 2002 gubernatorial campaign. While she was absent (and her department’s administrative budget was boiling over), most of the above items were adopted and implemented under the aegis of Gov. Barnes, who happens to be her party’s ultimate combatant in the fall elections.
Since the beginning of the 1960s, many public schools have slipped and slid into mediocrity. As attempts at quick fixes, past governors have handed out fat teacher raises and restructured education funding formulas. Barnes is the first to launch a frontal attack on the poor quality of Georgia schools.
On several other issues, the governor’s critics may be right: The maharajah of Mabelton has much to explain in the coming weeks. Why did he change the flag? Why did he advocate the Northern Arc, only to back away from it? Why does he remain mum about the questionable activities of Charlie Walker and the nutty declarations of Cynthia McKinney? Why doesn’t he take action to control the awful truck traffic on the interstates? Etc.
However, the bigger question may be: Why are so many teachers seething with anger at Barnes when signs of school improvements wrought by his administration are visible nearly everywhere? The e-mail tsunami likely to follow this piece will no doubt contain the answer to this modest inquiry. Bellsouth.net, beware.
Bill Shipp
is editor of Bill Shipp's Georgia, a weekly newsletter on government and business.
He can be reached at P.O. Box 440755, Kennesaw, GA 30144 or by calling (770)
422-2543,
e-mail: bshipp@bellsouth.net,
Web address:
http://www.billshipp.com
