Good Education? How do We Count the Ways?

What is the heart of a good education. By what shall we measure it?

Is it the accumulation of facts? Is a good education measured by how many tidbits of information  the student memorizes?

Or is a good education one that prepares a person for a job? No more, no less.

Wouldn't a good education be one that trains the mind to think, one that creates artists and scientists and inventors?

Or is the most important thing life skills? how to do your taxes, what a mortgage is all about, how to dance, and so forth.

It could even be suggested a good education is one that creates a good person, a good member of society, someone who stays out of jail, treats his neighbor right, and goes to work each day.

America is reflecting on its fall from the pinnacle of education, concerned that we are no longer considered the world's best-educated people. I would suggest, as we reflect on where we've been and where we're going, we not measure our success in just one of the above ways.

But in all of them.

States Rights Not Reason to Dump Common Core

Would you ask what I think of Common Core?

To be truthful, I perhaps do not know much about Common Core. I know it is a program that sets standards for education. It seeks to spell out and specify some of the things students should be learning. I know it is a program the governors' association -- that would be the National Governors Association -- came up with. Well, the NGA and another group, the Council for Chief State School Officers, came up with it.

I've heard some states rights advocates oppose Common Core, wanting Utah to not be guided by a national agenda. From what little I know, the program is not being run out of the federal Department of Education.

Even if Common Core were a federal program, though, I would not be too quick to oppose it on that basis. If it is a good program, I'd say why not let it stay? Opposing a program just because of who came up with it doesn't seem the best way to decide if it is good. If you are concerned that it isn't a state program and you do not want something with such national flavor (45 of the 50 states are signed into Common Core), take what is good about the program and create and run your own state version. (That might mean letting go of some good resources from the NGA and CCSSO, though.)

Judge the program on its own merits. I may be with the Article I, Section 8, and 10th Amendment folks on some things, but I am not ready to ax Common Core based on those two parts of our Constitution.

Do We Remove Parent Just for Drugs?

Yes, I do believe a parent on drugs is not a healthy environment for a child, and society is not wrong to step in.

If you are to talk about rights, do not overlook the rights of the child. A child cannot opt out of a bad environment on his or her own. If society does not protect the child, it will not be protected. I argue that a child has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- and if the parent is endangering that right, protecting the child is in order.

Oh, but, I do waver. Not that something should not be done to protect the child, but is that something the removal of the parent from the home? Taking a parent out of the home is a precarious thing. Taking a family apart is a precarious thing.

I can only say I think on it tonight, wondering if the safety of the child warrants such a move. I am not imagining how else society (okay, government) can step in other than removing the parent.

Ease up on Drug War by Lightening Punishment

'Tis time for a change up in the drug war, lest we lose it.

Time to quit tossing so many people in jail.

I pick up Sunday's paper and what do I read?  "Mass incarceration hasn't made us safer," says the headline. It's an article by Jess Rigelhaupt, written for the Free Lance-Star in Fredricksburg, Va. (The article was reprinted in the Deseret News.)

"The United States is the largest jailer in the world," Rigelhaupt writes, noting we have 2.3 million people locked up. "It has an unrivaled incarceration rate," he says, explaining that one out of every 100 adults is behind bars.

Now, however is it, in America, that we could be locking up more people than any other nation? Is this in America, the land of the free?

Rigelhaupt lays it at the feet of the drug war. More than half of the new sentences to state prisons from 1985 to 2000 were for drug offenses, he says. And, he tells why. The nation got "tough on crime in the mid-1970s, with longer sentences, mandatory jail time and new reasons for sending folks to jail on drug offenses.

Well, lay the article down. I don't know that we are losing the war on drugs, but we are losing the war for public support of a war on drugs. However are you going to justify the war when it has led us to pack more people into prison than any other nation? That doesn't fit the image of the land of the free. If you are the land of the incarcerated, it is hard to claim you are also the land of the free.

So, let's quit tossing so many people in jail. No, I'm not talking of legalizing drugs, not at all. But, let us step down the penalty, lighten it up.

Instead of jails, halfway houses. Let's place drug users in monitored housing. I suppose some would say they will still be incarcerated, but, if they are to so be considered, it will be to a lesser degree. Require them to live in the housing, and chase them down when they wander too much, but don't actually lock them up unless they are testing positive or buying drugs.

Instead of getting tougher on drugs, get lighter.

Now, one of the negative effects of drug use is that the drug user is less inclined to go to work. Drugs tend to take a person out of the workplace. So, as a punishment, let's require them to work. Whenever work can be found outside the housing, give them work leave for the day to do the work.

Perhaps there is a chance such a move might be good for our employment numbers. Many a drug user is without a job. If we take a segment of our society that is not working, and place them in jobs, employment should increase. We won't find jobs for them all, but pushing them at the job market will be a pressuring force to drive up the number of people working.

And, fight the tendency to over staff the housing. I don't know what would be a good ratio of workers to residents. Is one attendant for every 35 residents enough? Perhaps.

The monitored housing approach would mean the residents would be tested regularly, perhaps even daily. As long as they are clean, they maintain their privilege of coming and going from the housing. If they are not clean, then they are restricted. And, if they still get in trouble when simply told they have to stay home, then finally lock them up.

It's an easing of the punishment for using drugs. I wonder but what it might prove a more effective way of reducing usage.

Ahead in Dimes 10-1 not Enough to Secure Victory

Okay, what did we learn today?

From the conventions, and whether the caucus-convention system is a good thing.

Some say, you know, that since we are a Republic, the caucus system is the way to go, as it allows us to elect someone at the caucus meeting who goes on to convention and votes on our behalf.

The American way.

Well, we learned it is hard to run a survey to determine who will win. I heard that said this past week, and I think I know one reason why it is so. The candidates make their speeches, swaying votes this way and that, and all the campaigning to that point often goes out the window. Money spent, money lost.

As a person who does not like money running politics, I like this.

I understand Mia Love and Scott Howell both gave good speeches. Both won.

I'm told Orrin Hatch outspent Dan Liljenquist 10-1. Hatch did dominate in convention, but failed to get the 60 percent necessary to eliminate Liljenquist. Now, 60 percent would seem a likely achievement when you outspend your opponent by such a resounding margin, but it didn't happen.

Victory, then, for the small-budget contender.

Well, I remain with mixed feelings on the caucus-convention system. If the participation that was experienced in the caucuses a month ago was the norm, I would say do not (and do not and do not) get rid of them. It was too precious to see people there, caring and involved in the process and enjoying.

But the thing I do not like about the caucus-convention is this: We go to the caucuses in the name of being involved, only to hand over our right to vote to a political activist. My feeling has been: I'll cast my own vote, if you don't mind. Thank you.

My thoughts on the caucus-convention system have been tempered of late not only by observing this year's process, but also by being out campaigning. Too often do I run into those who simply do not show any desire to be involved. I can understand how they might, then, be willing to elect someone to study out the candidates for them.

Trick is, though, for the most part, those who would just as soon someone do the studying for them are not likely to even show up for the caucus meeting.

Spring Break Warnings about Cartels? They're now in Utah

In one way, Utah might rank as a state most affected by Mexico's drug cartels, not border states such as Arizona and Texas.

This because Utah has one of the greatest percentages of land owned by the federal government.

Pick up Wednesday's Deseret News, if you haven't thrown it away yet, and read the article titled, "Watch out for marijuana grows," telling how Mexican drug cartels are hiding large marijuana farms on Utah's public lands.

The more public land a state has, the more likely the cartels will want to farm there.

The cartels are not satisfied with trafficking drugs across the border. Being reasonably smart, they realize raising marijuana in the U.S. not only places their product closer to its market, but also sidesteps the problem of smuggling it across the border.

Southern Utah is seen as the part of this state where the cartels are most likely to raise their marijuana. I don't know for sure, but wonder if that is partly because of the interstate highways I-15 and I-70.

So, with good growing conditions, the availability of federal land and good traffic routes, Southern Utah is likely a plum growing location for the cartels.

I read with interest in the DesNews article about how a DEA officer warns Utahns to be cautious in the back country this spring and summer. I guess the idea is, you don't want to accidentally run into the cartels if they are protecting the secrecy of their farms at all costs.

It reminded me of other travel warnings about spring breaks, of how travelers are sometimes warned of traveling into Mexico because of the cartels.

Now, those travel warnings are right here in Utah.

Why is America the One Thing Not Worth Giving to?

Is paying your taxes a patriotic thing?

I know it isn't considered such. Some of us even think it patriotic to oppose paying taxes, because Uncle Sam doesn't deserve the money, won't spend it wisely, or whatever.

And, some of us thinking it shows we are wise, prudent citizens if we save ourselves from paying anything we don't have to to the government.

We talk of how we shouldn't want to elect a candidate if he or she can't handle his or her money so wisely as to avoid unnecessary taxes.

I disagree.

We think it good to give to charities. We think it good to give to college athletics. We think it good to give to a lot of things. Why not to America?

Why is it America is the one thing that isn't worth giving to? Why is it that America is the one thing we all say we love, yet none of us would toss so much as an extra dollar to?