Op Ed: Education Nation’s
Foremost Priority
For 21st Century

“Know-Nothing” election damage demands action.

Norman Rockwell

(EUGENE, Ore.) - The American public sometimes has to learn the hard way what constitutes common-sense action in the most demanding of situations. Recent damaging effects of the dual-party “know-nothing” approach to issues make it painfully clear: Comprehensive review of our educational system is now by far the highest priority demanded for our 21st Century America. Widespread politically pandering vote-seeking propaganda, substituting for issue-clarifying dialog, clearly became the major pry-tool for prevaricators on both sides. National and state-level leadership, elective and intra-party, must be held to accountability for this result --with the only really effective weapon some long-overdue changes in process and product produced by our educational system. In this 21st Century, the psychologies of the learning process and the easily available new technology of digital delivery and access to Internet resources make such change not only imperative but also much simpler and easier --and less costly-- than ever before. Democracy as a political process is often slow-and difficult. The saving grace is that, once common-sense solution becomes well understood and widely known, action can be determinative, achieved even at cost of confrontation and consequences both costly, sometimes convulsing. The historic example is the institution of slavery, for many decades the foundation for the economy in very influential areas of this nation. Yet even that human scourge, sanctioned by long centuries of acceptance, fell away in very large part when confronted by common understanding of damage to our democracy. The transformational revolution just accomplished by our 2008 Presidential choice surely proves the case. A recent national editorial cartoon depicted the national capital. The caption cited the Constitutional “equality of opportunity” famous-lines --then added: “Ratified Nov. 4 2008” That Civil War convulsion of our democracy required too many decades, ending only with bloody violence. Surely what we now so clearly need in our schools can be achieved for full “equality of opportunity under law” without blood-letting, by common consent and cooperation. Despite absolute refusal of any compromise for far too many decades, even the most Righteous remnants of the formerly proud Republican die-hard dissenters, long the denying-group for true educational reform, are now forced by overwhelming majority public opinion to the act of rational compromise. In the aftermath of our most transitional elective choice of leaders --both in the White House and in the Congress-- this nation has reached the transitional point for its further progress in the 21st Century. Those same impacts are sure to be felt in every state, especially in our educational system organized and developed to provide state and local control of every function and activity. No longer can we allow every other area of the commonweal to concentrate and coalesce learning and exchange of working knowledge via new technologies clearly shaping our whole world --while denying and defeating the desperate needs for those same learning methods and development processes to education. Given the costly and damaging impacts across Oregon of outsourcing work generation and jobs clearly caused by onrushing globalization, probing reexamination of Oregon education --at every level from kindergarten through graduate school, and with special emphasis on community college offerings and process-- must begin rapidly and be carried out comprehensively. Definitive and desperately needed additional funding --always a roadblock previously-- can be found first in the actual dollar-savings explicit in effective uses of modern technology. Class-size and learning-process --bugaboos and progress-breakers for decades-- no longer need shape the learning-surround in any learning group, with truly individualized learning an honest and open process now easily provided by digital delivery. From a 50-year foundation of learning media in the thousands of topics, made in every conceivable “audiovisual” format, digital delivery can now drop any one or any series right in front of each learner, for “see with your own eyes” acceptance and immediate application. Given that kind of fundamental learning experience in our continuing “common schools” system --with full state and local control also continuing-- we can now, for the first time in our educational history, prepare the potential citizen for the demands on understandings that democracy requires. Perhaps even more important is the inescapable fact that precisely the same approach, process, learning media and conscientious direction by skilled teacher-presenters is what is now demanded to prepare our children for their massively changing roles in the already-arriving 21st Century. For any possible cost-overhangs beyond the achievable economic equality available from modern tools used by modern teachers for modern purposes, there is the solid and massive back-drop of those massive savings due now from cessation of two wasting wars, costing us monthly more than is now expended nationally in a year for educational adaptation of these new technologies. Add to that the regulated, reasonable and carefully controlled additional dollars available in shifting heavy advertising expenditures on television and in print from promotion of product to corporate consolidation for community service. Often this takes the form of matching fund grants by equipment manufacturers and learning media product producers, recognizing the proven experience of past demonstration projects at both state and national level. From that experience, starting in the audio-visual era of the ‘60s and 70s, these basic producers of both teaching tools and the products demanded for their effective usage know that such actions can multiply markets and make mass usage in home learning centers a booming reality. That has long been a fundamental part of corporate charter conditions, suggested by educational leaders in past generations. Proposals are now again being demanded by educational leaders, with the force of Congressional and State Legislature action rapidly sought. Given such rational and reasonable approach to costs, one can begin to see a new dawn of democratic responsibility for the common school concept. That new concept is made possible --some believe inevitable- by the widespread adoption and effective adaptations already underway very broadly within every area of modern life --except our educational system. How better to begin our transformational decade into the 21 Century, under surely “radical leadership now rationally recognized” as our American choice, than to conduct such operations and remediations on our most essential Constitutionally-promised commonweal good?