Everything I needed to know I learned from Utah school bureaucrats
This last couple of years has been a rough one for schools in Utah having to make tough economic and disciplinary decisions based on the capricious budget allocations of a governor (and the Utah legislature), who promised to put education first, and the arbitrary application of the ideas of justice and decency – not necessarily putting them together. Here is what I learned:
Make someone else pay for your mistake – When kids who owed money on their lunch account were mistakenly given lunches, the school decided to take those lunches and throw them away. On a micro level, this makes some sense. If someone doesn’t pay for something in a capitalist society, it gets repossessed. That is a valuable lesson for children to learn. Besides, the government gets left holding the bag far too often. Having to bail out banks and car manufacturers and clean up pollution left by now defunct companies is expensive work; paying for kid’s lunches would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Rules trump logic and economics – It is better to throw away food and waste resources than not to follow the rules. Those school lunches could not be used again. They were dumped in the trash. However, the students were still entitled to eat something and the meals were replaced with fruit and milk. In this case, the school district spent money on the wasted lunches that no child would have to pay for and on the fruit and milk that replaced those lunches. It might have been wasteful, but it did follow the rules even if it was a costly mistake to fix.
Conform or be drawn to conform – When students showed up in school yearbook photos sporting tattoos and clothing that was deemed by some random authority to be inappropriate, the photos were altered. Tattoos are an expression of individuality. When they are erased from photographic evidence, it is erasing a part of the person who has the tattoo. Be who you are unless you go to a school in Utah; then be who they want you to be.
Women should be shamed for their bodies – Only women are required to be airbrushed. Whether it is for a national magazine or for high school yearbook photos, men can look as they are, women need to apply more than just makeup. They also need to apply the art of digital enhancement, so that they will look better for the authorities.
Libraries have no future – When the Ogden school district eliminated 20 full-time librarian positions, it sent a clear message about libraries and those who staff them. Libraries are stuffy places full of dusty books. They have no place in a modern society full of technical advancements. Even if the library is teaching about other forms of media, there is no place in a school budget for a place of information and the people who might be able to best locate that information. Eliminating the help at the libraries early on will also eliminate them from later life.
Make someone else pay for your mistake – When kids who owed money on their lunch account were mistakenly given lunches, the school decided to take those lunches and throw them away. On a micro level, this makes some sense. If someone doesn’t pay for something in a capitalist society, it gets repossessed. That is a valuable lesson for children to learn. Besides, the government gets left holding the bag far too often. Having to bail out banks and car manufacturers and clean up pollution left by now defunct companies is expensive work; paying for kid’s lunches would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Rules trump logic and economics – It is better to throw away food and waste resources than not to follow the rules. Those school lunches could not be used again. They were dumped in the trash. However, the students were still entitled to eat something and the meals were replaced with fruit and milk. In this case, the school district spent money on the wasted lunches that no child would have to pay for and on the fruit and milk that replaced those lunches. It might have been wasteful, but it did follow the rules even if it was a costly mistake to fix.
Conform or be drawn to conform – When students showed up in school yearbook photos sporting tattoos and clothing that was deemed by some random authority to be inappropriate, the photos were altered. Tattoos are an expression of individuality. When they are erased from photographic evidence, it is erasing a part of the person who has the tattoo. Be who you are unless you go to a school in Utah; then be who they want you to be.
Women should be shamed for their bodies – Only women are required to be airbrushed. Whether it is for a national magazine or for high school yearbook photos, men can look as they are, women need to apply more than just makeup. They also need to apply the art of digital enhancement, so that they will look better for the authorities.
Libraries have no future – When the Ogden school district eliminated 20 full-time librarian positions, it sent a clear message about libraries and those who staff them. Libraries are stuffy places full of dusty books. They have no place in a modern society full of technical advancements. Even if the library is teaching about other forms of media, there is no place in a school budget for a place of information and the people who might be able to best locate that information. Eliminating the help at the libraries early on will also eliminate them from later life.