Education and General Government are Electorate Driven

The following is my reply to an article published in
Bridges magazine about the comparison between
Windsor, Ontario schools and Michigan schools. A
significant local event (Blossom Street) is incorporated
for comparison.

http://tinyurl.com/qbfco8o

I went through high school at Princeton NJ during
the period before the university professors were
receiving the high levels of pay they now achieve. As
a result, I attended public high school with the professors'
children. The pressure from those academics to
guarantee that their children received a first class
education was incessant. Princeton High School was
in a constant competition with one other school in the
state for first place, and many years Princeton won.

Then the university began paying better salaries and the
professors sent their children to private schools they
could finally afford. Princeton High School's status
slipped and will probably never recover. As a transplant
to the UP of this state I have come to the view that
parents who don't demand any better of their schools
than they do of their politicians reap the rewards as,
unfortunately, do their children.

In an angry meeting last night (9.18.2013) the city
council in Iron River told the people that there is no
money to repair half a block of Blossom Street so it
will remain closed. But where were those people during
the past 20 years while the street was deteriorating?
They seem to think that anyone they elect will look out
for the interests of those who elected them. That simply
is never the case. Similarly, the comparison of a
Michigan education to those of other states as well as
foreign districts has been available for decades.

Parents of today should know the quality of their
education compared to that of people they compete
with from elsewhere, and have made no significant
moves to improve the Michigan standards. In theory,
in the representative democracy we live in, the key isn't
the legislature, but the electorate, the parents who have
the power to apply political pressure if and whenever
they will. Until they do that, the best that Michigan has
to offer will, for the most part, leave for greener pastures.


Bill Vajk