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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 2000)
Monday Editor in chief: Jack Clifford Managing Editor: Jessica Blanchard Newsroom: (541) 346-5511 Room 300, Erb Memorial Union P.O. box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403 E-mail: ode@oregon.uoregon.edu EDITORIAL EDITOR: MICHAEL J. KLECKNER opededitor@journalist.com Many factors to weigh in the better-school equation Public schools in Oregon need a change. It seems many Oregonians feel this way, because there are two measures on the November ballot specifically addressing schools. We've all experienced or heard about bad teachers, and we know of good teachers as well, but the system needs a shake-up. The question is, what sort of shake-up? We'd prefer moving away from standardized tests and the demand for quality without funding, and instead focus on the ability of students to think and learn, and the innovation and ex pertise of teachers who are well trained, well-paid and monitored for performance. Measure 1 makes the Legisla ture provide funding for any school quality goals they estab lish, and we think this is a wise step. High quality schools and teacners require a little more money. Our students deserve the very best teachers, devoted to their task. The next generation is our most valuable resource, and spending on schools yields less crime, lower law enforce ment costs and a better dLuuumy. Measure 95 is more contentious. The law would provide a shake up by basing teachers' pay on job performance, instead of the current sys tem, wmch gives teachers raises for seniority and for continuing education. This is a worthy goal, but how job performance is defined and how much teachers are cur- i rently paid must be consid- ( ered. And Measure 95 does exactly what Measure 1 wants to prevent: It sets a school quality goal, but pro vides no money to achieve it. The state estimates Measure 95 will cost public schools $46 million in the first three years. That money could be spent on education rather than stan dardized testing. Measure 95 doesn't specify how to judge teachers perform ance, but Oregon is fond of stan dardized testing, which is used for the school report cards. Using these tests to measure a teacher’s performance would be just plain wrong. Standardized tests only reflect a student's abilities at one moment, they don’t take into ac count cultural and economic fac tors and they don't reflect the classroom environment in which teachers must work. Under Mea sure 95, what will happen to teachers in communities with a high percentage of students with family, economic or behavioral problems? Teachers won’t want to work in those communities and they'll be unfairly punished for problems beyond their control. The measure might motivate teachers to work harder with the problem students in order to bring test scores up. But a heavy reliance uu sianuaruizea resis generally makes teachers teach to the tests, which means children's education is limited to a very narrow set of facts and exercises. In that setting, teachers don't have extra time to focus on the disadvantaged stu dents, and they don't have time to worry about teaching kids to think. Pounding a specific list of facts into a child's head doesn't necessarily result in an educated student. Teaching kids takes time, money and a more complicated and subtle evaluation process than a multiple-choice exam. And for real motivation, why not give bonuses to teachers who go above and beyond the call of duty? Teaching is the most valuable service we can provide for the fu ture. Teachers should be paid more, and they should be held to a high standard of excellence. But the teachers' union in Oregon seems to have a knee-jerk reaction to any proposal to monitor or base pay on teacher performance. Maybe this resistance comes be cause teachers are paid so little. is $40,582 — and this is with at least a bachelor’s degree. If Ameri cans value the education of their children, they should be willing to pay a premium for good teachers, especially if stringent performance standards are enacted. But the union might simply be unwilling to allow serious evalua tion of teachers, and it needs to lower that wall. Pay should be tied to performance — as well as edu cation, training, skills and past performance — if that perform ance can be measured adequately. There are many factors in the better-school equation, however. If we had a simultaneous commit ment from parents to be more in volved in their children's schools, from unions to be open to new ways of thinking about teacher salaries, from teachers to re-evalu ate _ — _ their teaching methods, from the taxpayers to provide enough fund ing so that the best and the bright est choose a teaching career, and from the Legislature to ensure that the methods of evaluating teachers and students actually reflect learn ing, then we would really be shak ing up the system. Measure 95 gives teachers some tough challenges, but it doesn't provide the right solutions. Mea sure 1, on the other hand, is mov ing in the right direction by requir ing the Legislature to provide money when they demand quality. Vote yes on Measure 1 and no on Measure 95. This editorial represents the opinion of the Emerald editorial board. Responses can be sent to ode@oregon.uoregon.edu According to the Oregon School Boards Association, the aver age salary in Oregon is $37,403, and the na tional average WHAT IS THAT\ NOISE!!! ) _-*""1/ Giovanni Salimena Emerald P»s> A historical interpretation of the Second Amendment SENSIBLE PAT PAYNE A well-regulated militia, being necessary for the security of a free state, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.” Of all the words that our founding fathers inscribed in 1787, these twenty-four may have been the worst chosen. This is the Second Amendment to the Constitution. When you read a law, it’s not enough to understand just what the individual words mean: That’s why the National Rifle Associa tion cites only the second half of the amendment. You also have to read for context: When was the law written r What was the state of the nation? The world? What were the particular viewpoints of the writers? What had recent history taught them? Pro-gun advocates, in particu lar, read the Second Amendment to the Constitution as if it were written in a vacuum, like it was a gift to future ages written by infal lible men. It wasn’t. The founding fathers were writing from their ex periences fighting in the Ameri can Revolution. The founders were wary of standing armies. Great Britain had sent troops to fight in the Seven Years War against the French in Quebec. The war left England in debted, so the king decided the colonists could be taxed for their share. When Bostoninans refused to pay taxes to a government in which they had no say, British troops were sent to occupy it. There, the soldiers stole, drank heavily, demanded quartering from private citizens and fought with the colonists, culminating in the Boston Massacre in 1770. The Continental Army was a force formed solely for revolution. The citizen recruits brought their own weapons to fight with. They had drilled to handle these weapons safely and knew how to care for them. The Continental Army was dissolved in 1783. It was thought that a civilian militia, made up of part-time soldiers, would be all that the nation need ed to resist an invasion. This is why the Second Amend ment was written the way it was. In effect, the founders stated: We will give you the right to bear arms. In exchange, you will aid the government in wartime by fighting for the national defense. This system worked well at first. However, the British at tacked the United States again in 1812, and the system broke down. The troops fell before a battle hardened and well-equipped British force. The British almost won the war and would have con quered the United States if not for Napoleon’s return in 1814. After the conflict, the citizen militias were scrapped and a new United States Army formed in its place. As it is, the Second Amend ment should have been declared null and void at this time, when there was no longer a call for “a well-regulated militia.” Furthermore, the founding fa thers had no conception of techno logical advances in the centuries to come. There had been only one rap id-firing weapon by 1750 (James Puckle’s multi-barreled musket of 1709 was pitched as an anti-board ing weapon for the Royal Navy — it was rejected). It wouldn’t be until the Civil War in the 1860s and the advent of Gatling’s gun that rapid fire weapons came to the battle front. Simply put, in the days that the founders were writing the Bill of Rights, there were no differences between civilian and military firearms. Today, anyone can distin guish between a Winchester hunt ing rifle and a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle. But how do you fore see something that won’t exist for 200 years? Would they have ap proved of the average citizen own ing an AK-47? I don’t think so. Therefore, here’s a strict interpre tation of the amendment as it should be today: You have the right to bear a single-shot, lead-ball, muzzle-loading, black-powder, flint-lock rifle to use as part of a cit izen militia in defense of the nation ... but since citizen militias don’t exist anymore (and those tanked up rednecks in Michigan and Mon tana don’t count), you really don’t have that right at all. Pat Payne is a columnist for the Oregon Daily Emerald. His views do not necessari ly represent those of the Emerald. He can be reached at Macross_SD@hotmail.com.
