Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed? " An Analysis Of A Letter To The Editor

Go ahead and read this letter to the editor that was in the Anchorage Daily News the other day:

The Letter

THE LAST OF A DYING BREED
Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed? The constant whining, wailing and caterwauling politicians of both stripes, lining up like pigs at the feeding trough of public spending, have gorged themselves for years.
Since Tom Fink, I’d given up all hope of ever seeing another fiscal conservative. To make actual cuts of real substance — ’twas a consummation devoutly to be wished. To take on the biggest governmental fraud, public indoctrination of our youth masquerading as education, requires a strength of courage that was thought never to be seen again.
So-called public education, for approximately 140 years, has produced decade after decade of declining test scores, rewarded in the following decades by increased funding. In the private sector, such a business model would have been diagnosed and terminated 135 years ago as an unmitigated failure. The answer is not more funding, but the fraud’s replacement with charter, private and religious schools that educate.
— Ed Wassell
Anchorage

How to review it?

I feel I need to respond. But who should my audience be?  I should respond to the ADN, but my response is way too long.  Then who?  My first impulse was to respond to people who might be taken in by these words, to help them see between the lines, or below the surface as some might say.  That would be easy to do.

But the real challenge is to address myself directly to the author.  But how?  A human being wrote this, and my intent is not to belittle him, but to try to engage in conversation about what he wrote.  Does he really believe this?  So I thought about how a graded my graduate students' papers.  I had to stay strictly objective.  My point was to help them improve, not to make the drop out of the class.

So let's see what I can do.  Line by line.  

"Upon what meat do these, our legislative potentates, feed?"

Mr. Wassell, I think you'd acknowledge this is not how most people speak today.  I even googled "Upon what meat do these potentates feed?"  I got several close citations.

"Upon what meat do these men feed that we should be their slaves, that they should not pay the same taxes that other people pay?"

This comes from a book called State Republican Legislative Souvenir, 1897, and Political History of Michigan  and recounts a debate over getting railroads to pay their fair share of taxes.  It's not that different from Alaskans asking that the oil industry pay its fair share of taxes.

Here's another example I found:

"Upon what meat do these men feed that they are grown so great?"

This was a harangue against school boards that fought against  teachers unionizing.  It appeared in a 1919 article in "The Public:  A Journal of Democracy.  (p. 396)

So, Mr Wassell what is it about late 19th/early 29th century rhetoric that you feel is so relevant for the opening of your letter?  How does it add to the readers' understanding of the issues you appear to discuss?  I ask in all seriousness.  Perhaps that's how you talk.  Or you want to be a little more poetic than we hear today.  Perhaps you want to impress people with your erudition.  Or perhaps it's a time you would feel more comfortable.  You don't tell us, so I have to guess.

Let's move on.

"The constant whining, wailing and caterwauling politicians of both stripes, lining up like pigs at the feeding trough of public spending, have gorged themselves for years."

The phrase 'legislative potentates' in the first sentence was the only hint of judgment on your part.

Merriam Webster tells us that potentate means:

" RULER, SOVEREIGN
broadly : one who wields great power or sway"

But you're applying it not to sovereigns or rulers, but mere legislators who have to struggle with other legislators.  They really don't have anything near a potentates' power.  But you convey that they are all powerful.   

Then this second sentence slides into anti-government liturgy, like repeating verses of the Bible that everyone takes as a natural truth.  At least members of that political religion.  But it is simply empty rhetoric that attacks the honor of all politicians.  Without any factual evidence.  As though all politicians are equally venal and none are in Juneau because they believe in the serving the public.  It's typical anti-government clichés.  Perhaps you are surrounded like people who talk in those kinds of phrases, but to many of your readers, I'm sure this language will be jarring and hurt your credibility.  

And you seem to condemn both 'potentates' and 'legislators.'  So if you disapprove of authoritarian rulers and you think democratically elected legislators are all hacks, what do you believe in?  I guess no government at all.  Let the natural state of humankind work things out?  Is that what you're saying?  If that's what you believe, why not just say you are opposed to government altogether?   

OK, on to the next sentence.  

"Since Tom Fink, I’d given up all hope of ever seeing another fiscal conservative. To make actual cuts of real substance — ’twas a consummation devoutly to be wished."

Conservapedia tells us:

"Fiscal conservatism is a political position (primarily in the United States) that calls for lower levels of public spending, lower taxes and lower government debt. It is a variety of conservatism concerned with economic rather than social issues. Fiscal conservatives oppose unnecessary government expenditures, deficits, and government debt. They take the perspective of the present and future taxpayers, and worry about the possible burden on them. They support balanced budgets. This should be contrasted with those who believe that lower taxation will stimulate industrial development, even though it causes higher deficits."

But it also says:

"Fiscal conservatism may also support limited periods of higher taxes in order to lower the public debt."

I'm not sure why you thought it useful to lift a phrase from Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be speech.  This time you're reaching back, not 100 years for your style, but 400 years.  What do you mean by this?  Hamlet was referring to death.  And you seem to be referring to cutting the budget.  I guess that's a form of death.  At one time, people might recognize the line, but today I doubt very many would know where it comes from, so it might be helpful to give Will some credit here.

OK, next sentence.

"To take on the biggest governmental fraud, public indoctrination of our youth masquerading as education, requires a strength of courage that was thought never to be seen again."

Again, rather flowery language, but that's a stylistic issue I won't quibble with other than to ask you what purpose you think it serves here?  But embedded in this sentence is another mantra of the anti-government, anti-public school movement.   Here are a couple of examples of this wording Google found for me:

From the Montana Standard

" the socialist liberal progressive, politically correct liberal idiot-logical indoctrination camps that masquerade as public schools inculcating our youth instead of instructing them on what they need to know to be productive and responsible citizens."

A bit over the top I'd say.

From the New American:

"Global citizenship education is also a frequent topic in the report and all throughout the UN's global indoctrination efforts masquerading as education."

Can't you make your point using your own words?

Let's move on.

"So-called public education, for approximately 140 years, has produced decade after decade of declining test scores, rewarded in the following decades by increased funding."

Finally, there is something factual we can actually debate.  By factual, I don't mean it's actually true, but rather it talks in terms of facts that we can look up.  And so I did.  It's not easy to find such statistics.  Here's 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Report, but I don't see anything on testing.  Here's a history of standardized testing.  It's hard to tease out anything like your numbers.   OK, you'll probably say these are liberal and biased reports.  So please give me your statistics - but make sure they are objective and not conservative biased stats.

School testing was just an idea a few people  had 140 years or so ago.  The idea was to test kids to see how much they learned.  But it took a while for such testing to be implemented. Then there was a huge market for tests. But there were no national tests where schools were tested on a regular basis using the same test with scores traced and monitored until very recently.  So, the idea that scores declined decade after decade for 140 years has absolutely no basis in fact.

And if such declining test scores did exist over that time period, I think it would say more about the inaccuracy of the tests than the abilities of the students.  This was a time when the United States became the leading nation in the world, built on ingenuity, scientific discoveries, inventions, industrial technology.  Countless great Americans graduated from public high schools -
Jonas Salk, Steve Jobs, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Google co-founder Larry Page, Spike Lee, Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Warren Buffet, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan - just to name a few.

There certainly are problems with public schools. But there are also problems with private schools.  And private schools have the luxury of expelling students who don't fit in well.  Public schools can't do that.  So they have all the more labor intensive (and costly)  students - from behavior problems, cognitive problems, etc.  .

Your claim of 140 years of decade by decade declines in test scores is hard to swallow.  You would be much more persuasive if you included some data to support your claim.  I doubt it exists.


Moving on to the next sentence.

" In the private sector, such a business model would have been diagnosed and terminated 135 years ago as an unmitigated failure."

First, businesses live or die based on making money, not test scores.  Businesses can be run very sloppily and make money in the right place and right time.  And they can be run well, but suffer from a bad economy - what I expect will happen to many businesses in Alaska if Dunleavy's budget were to pass.  Public schools are not businesses, because many of their students simply could not afford to go to school if they had to pay.

Second, the sentence is seems contradictory.  You just said that schools have had declining test scores 'decade after decade" for 140 years.  So, 135 years ago - had there actually been any testing - it would still be five years before the first decade was up.  So, even in your fantasy scenario, nothing would have been closed down.  I point that out because I think it's reflective of the lack of rigorous thinking throughout the letter.  Nearly all the sentences are cliché filled opinion.  There's nothing of substance there.  So the conclusion in your last sentence doesn't really follow from what you've written up to that point.

"The answer is not more funding, but the fraud’s replacement with charter, private and religious schools that educate."

I don't follow how you got to this conclusion.  You've offered us fact-free tirades against public schools.  You've not given us any data that shows - for educating all kids in the US - private schools are any better.  Yet that's your conclusion.

In addition, early on you talked about indoctrination.  While there are many good religious private schools in the United States, the very reason most people send their kids to private religious schools is to 'indoctrinate' them in the values and beliefs of that religion.  For example, here's the mission statement from Holy Rosary Academy:

"Holy Rosary Academy seeks to complete what the attentive parent has begun by forming students in faith, reason, and virtue through a classical education in the Roman Catholic Tradition."

Public schools indoctrinate kids in belief in the greatness of the United States.  Good public schools expose kids to many different ideas and ways of seeing the world.

Closing

This post could go on and on.  But I think I've made my key points.  And I'm afraid I've failed to do it in a way that might cause Mr. Wassell to even pause a bit.

After I wrote a first draft,  I couldn't help wondering who had written this letter for ADN readers, so I  googled and learned a bit that helps explain where some of this comes from.  I'm not certain it's the same Ed Wassell, but it seems likely.

Here's the key thing - in terms of understanding this letter - I found out.  An Ed Wassell from Anchorage got an award from the Acton Institute:

 "Best thing Going: “What you do is still far and away one of the best things going for Catholic Education in the United States.” Ed Wassell, Executive Director, Holy Rosary Academy, Anchorage, AK. 4-time honoree."

There are several other links to Ed Wassell being involved with Catholic affairs in Anchorage, but the school link probably tells us a lot.

What will happen if public school funding is drastically cut?  Class sizes will get much bigger, teachers will get overworked, and parents who can afford it will start looking for private schools.  And I would be surprised if Dunleavy didn't push, next go around, to use public money to give parents vouchers to private schools, even private religious schools, which I understand to be unconstitutional in Alaska.

I also found a video of a Holy Rosary teacher who won a national award as teacher of the week.  [Video is at the bottom of the page on the right]  She sounds like a great teacher.  What I found striking is that they showed her in her fourth grade class.  There were nine students.  Imagine what public school teachers could do with classes that size.

One last note.  Tom Fink, who Wassell mentions in the letter, is the chair of the board at Holy Rosary Academy.

There's nothing wrong with Mr. Wassell's involvement with Holy Rosary Academy, though it would be nice if he had disclosed that in the letter.  And would still like to hear Mr. Wassell's explanation for the somewhat old fashioned way of writing.

Let me also note that Jesuit schools have a reputation for teaching rigorous thinking skills, so this is not a condemnation of Catholic schools. Though victims of sexual abuse at Catholic schools will be less forgiving of their failures.    I have less confidence in the thinking skills students get in Evangelical schools, particularly those that deny evolution and teach traditional roles for males and females and believe that homosexuality is a sin.  But that is straying a bit.