Voting with Our Wallets

(This was a column I wrote for the Effingham Daily News a few weeks ago.  Considering its topic, I thought I would share it with the rest of you.)

Conventional wisdom suggests that people often vote with their wallets.  Based on some recent election results, conventional wisdom seems vindicated.  The selection of Bruce Rauner as the Republican gubernatorial candidate makes sense.  After all, we live in a state that has been broken by politicians, and Mr. Rauner was the only non-politician running.  No one can begrudge a person for choosing a candidate without a Springfield pedigree. 

On another topic, conventional wisdom also suggests that a number of factors contribute to the educational success of a child.  Heredity itself plays an important role, as does parenting and the overall home environment.  Unfortunately, those are also elements that are difficult to quantify.  How much of a role do genetics play, for example?  What about socio-economic status, or the educational experiences of the parents themselves?  It seems that for every convincing theory arguing this way or that, two or three other theories boldly proclaim otherwise.  At the end of the day, education is complicated.  Perhaps that is why we argue about it so much, and perhaps that is why our state and federal legislatures spend so much time paying lip service to the merits of education in the first place.

Try as they might, however, politicians cannot legislate a home environment. They cannot make laws that will lead to a child being raised by a family that values education. 

We can, however, legislate public schools to a certain extent, and we can do that because they are public.  We can influence the classroom environment, because the classrooms belong to us.  We pay for them.

And make sure of this, we will get what we pay for.

Bruce Rauner has not been vague about his disdain for public employee unions.  He has not been coy about his plans for public employee pensions.  That is probably one reason why he won the Republican primary.  People see a broken system and they have decided that some culprits in this mess are the very same unions he has chosen to battle.  Like the border-state governors he hails as heroes, Mr. Rauner has very openly targeted public employee unions as a menace to the pro-business environment he hopes to cultivate.

And perhaps there is logic to that, at least in the short term.  Perhaps if Mr. Rauner’s plans all work out, skittish businesses might be more likely to choose Illinois as a place worth considering.

Perhaps.

Children, however, are not educated in the short term, and children rarely get to choose where they go to school.

 My own child will begin kindergarten in five months.  Like any parent, I pray she enters a classroom each day that is led by a talented, caring, and hard-working teacher.  Fortunately, area communities are full of such educators.  Teachers retire, however.  Teachers are replaced.  Each time we, as a public, allow the teaching profession to become a less-attractive option for our college-age generation, students suffer.  Over time, our nation as a whole suffers.

            Before continuing, though, let us pause and ask ourselves some questions.  We just decided a few paragraphs ago that the predominate indicator of a child’s educational success stems from the home environment and all that that entails:  parenting, heredity, and resources.  Thus, what difference does it make what the child’s classroom environment looks like, particularly if it’s not even your child?  Why should you care if the school across town is falling apart when your children go to the school across the street? 

            At the end of the day, why would we even concern ourselves about what is done unto others and to other’s children, as long as our children are doing fine?

Bruce Rauner has made it very clear that he will take the lead in making public-education a less-attractive option for a generation eager to join the work force.  That is not hyperbole, it is simply a logical extension of his proposed policy.  If you decrease the ability for a profession to earn in the present and retire in the future, you have significantly decreased the likelihood that talented, caring, and hardworking people choose that profession. 

Unfortunately, this is not a scenario that is going to happen someday. This is something that is happening right now. In about a month, Eastern Illinois University will graduate one of the smallest classes of student teachers in its history.   Considering EIU ‘s reputation as a teacher’s college, this should be alarming.  However, it also makes perfect sense.  After all, a society can only treat a profession unprofessionally for so long before it sees the consequences.

To conclude, we should all vote with our wallets. We should take those wallets out, in fact, and place them next to our ballots.  Before we mark our ballets, however, we really ought to have the guts to open them up and at least glance at the pictures inside.