April 26, 2016

Frank Loconto

County Line

Dear Frank,

First, let me congratulate you for your show last Saturday, the one that highlighted the astonishing effects of the art of debate on the Broward county school system. The show had Robert Runcie, the Big Boss man of Broward Education, former Senator George Lemieux, and Ms. Levinson, a typically strident member of the Board of Education.

The Trivium – Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric – is the great crown jewel of Western Civilization. Everything flows from it. Rules, construction, and exposition are the things that enabled us to leave the caves of savagery where we found ourselves in some 25 centuries ago. The ability to think, to know that we are thinking, and the great gift of being able to act on same gave us the construct on which our way of life moved out of the darkness and saved the world.

Debate, particularly for young people, gives a sense of discipline on an individual level that is invaluable and, I daresay, incalculable in the maturation of its practitioners.

Team sports always can make an allowance for a weak performance from one of its members.  That’s why it is called a team.

In debate, you are like a gymnast starting her routine on the beam. You are out there by yourself. There are no nets. There are no “mulligans”. There are no “gimmees”. What you did to get there is in many ways a collective process. Good coaching, competitive practices, the mental striving to be on top of the pole, but to be out there where the regular buses don’t go, “to risk all on one turn of pitch and toss”, are the threads common to competitors, be they debaters or gymnasts.

[Let me digress for a brief minute. The gymnast I am referring to is Julia Hanson, my youngest granddaughter. She is a state champion gymnast, the state being Texas. She competed in 3 national meets this year, winning 2 of them. The one she finished second in was by .002 of a point.  She practices in a manner that is alien to me. I have told her that if she wants to make “withdrawals” she has to make “deposits”. Just like a debater. She wants to go to Tokyo in 2020. That’s just one more reason to stay a step ahead of the Obama “death panels”.]

I said I had some follow-up thoughts on education, thoughts that your show triggered. To wit;

#1 – If money is the one thing that makes schools better why aren’t the public schools in Washington turning our Pulitzer Prize winners in grammar school and Nobel Prize winners in high school? No place in the country, no place on the planet spends more per pupil than Washington, DC. Why hasn’t this made it a system that is demonstrably the best ever? I am glad that the Obamas live rent free in public housing. Since neither has ever held a real job the only other way they could handle the $130,000.00 tuition bills for their daughters – I don’t know if have to “brown bag” their lunch - would require them to wear ski masks and be familiar with Saturday Night specials. Knowledge of where all the 7-11s are would be helpful.  They could be the first non-Caucasian Bonnie & Clyde. Maybe we could bring back the Clinton Secret Service Executive Privilege ploy that he used when he was playing “Hide the Salami” with the zoftig intern. Maybe they could scout out some potential take downs and provide the getaway vehicles.

As a stop gap before demanding that English teachers know who Shakespeare was, not necessarily what he wrote and that pi is still 3.1416 how about demanding that all elected officials send their children to public school? No exceptions. None whatsoever.

#2 – Runcie uses the word “investment” as if he knows what it means.

He doesn’t. 

The Board of Education borrowed $800,000,000.00 November last. The money was supposedly for capital improvements. All he has to show for it is 10 pounds of cancelled checks. There is a section all prospectuses, prospectuses being documents used to convince people to buy the security being offered. It is called “Use of Proceeds”. It states in boring detail what the money being raised is going to be used for. Since the term of the bond is 30 years good husbandry would dictate that the money raised not be used for buying organic kale or low-carb tofu, the kind that Mrs. Obama favors. Those are expense items and must never be capitalized. Imagine the outrage if it were to be found out that in 1986 the Board of Education bought state of the art computers and took 30 years to pay for them. Can you say IBM Peanut PC? How about Gateway 2000? The 30 year old Apple, the one that Steve Jobs personal installed, is a big hit in the underfunded “inner city”, “super-predator” breeding  schools, right?

Why didn’t someone think to include the hugely successful tactic of the Obama recovery plan? You remember “shovel ready jobs, don’t you? It certainly worked before. Why not do it again. 5 months into the clicking interest clock and the only measurable progress is the continued success of attorneys, architects, bankers, insurance agents, and. so help me, consultants.

Perhaps Broward County has an enterprising underemployed attorney with a background in Securities Law, particularly the 1934 Act. Sounds like fraud to me. Perhaps a Federal Judge could help in this.

#3 – Mrs. Levinson, to be charitable, is a horse’s ass. OK, OK. To keep the dreaded Word Police from paying me another visit I’ll change that to mare’s ass. No matter the problem she has but one solution for it. More Money, more money, and still more money. After all, it’s for the children, isn’t it? She should be flogged.

As long as you have tenure you must use 130% of capacity to achieve mediocrity. If tenure is so good why is it denied to football coaches here?

It is not a question of why bad teachers are paid as much as good teachers but, rather, why are they paid at all. Paying bad teachers more money will not make them better teachers. There is one thing it will guarantee: sloth

Here’s a plan:

A – It worked well for Jack Welch and Al Neuharth. Identify the “underperforming schools”. Shit-can as many of the administrators and teachers as necessary to get the attention, a la Napoleon, before a battle.  Offer big bonuses as hazard pay to attract the best and brightest [Just because the “best and brightest” put the country on a one-way, express lane to the shit house in Vietnam doesn’t mean it is of no value]. Facts are inconvenient things for card-carrying modern American Liberal members of the Poverty-Industrial Complex.

We know that Johnny can’t read. We know that Consuela is weak in Geometry [If I were to ask why anyone named Patel or Wong is absent from that list would that be racism per se?] Quantify those deficiencies. Pay teachers extraordinary bonuses as the curve improves.

Try it. The worst that can happen is that we are back where we started.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET

PS – It’s a small thing but it is important. The only way your Saturday show could have been better would have been if you wore one of my ties.