PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, FEBRUARY 5, 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
One potato, two potato
It is shameful that a
nation as rich and boun-
tiful as the United States
should have a hunger
problem. No one, espe-
cially children, should go
to bed hungry; no one
should have to beg for
food.
Besides our people, the greatest
resource we have is land. The Sa-
lem-Keizer School District should
begin a program that turns parts of
our school property into commu-
nity food gardens.
At schools, such as Kennedy El-
ementary and others where too
many children depend on free or
reduced lunches, it would be bet-
ter to teach kids where food comes
from by growing it themselves. Veg-
etables grown in gardens at each
school would provide nutritious
food that is vital to a child’s well
being. A community garden would
also benefi t families in need that live
near those schools.
The science of growing food is
thousands of years old. Man has cul-
tivated what he eats across the globe
and across the millenia. It is not
rocket science, it is as basic as it gets.
Some might say that we can’t
force our school children to grow
their own lunches. That would be
correct. We can provide the tools
and supplies for kids and families in
need to grow fresh vegetables that
are important to their diet.
Such a garden program should
be developed with as little bureau-
cracy as possible. It doesn’t need an
environmental impact statement. It
doesn’t need legislative or federal
oversight. It just needs to get started.
Starting with each school’s busi-
ness partners, donations can be
sought for the implements: timbers
to create raised garden
beds, good soil, seeds,
trowels, hoes and water
hoses.
No child would be
required to be involved,
yet what parent would
keep their child from
learning about food and
agriculture and have fun doing it.
The program could be an excit-
ing and rewarding if presented with
enthusiasm and a can-do spirit by
the school district and community
groups such as the Rotary Club of
Keizer.
Kids generally don’t like vegeta-
bles, especially if they are not served
at home regularly, but what kid who
grows their own carrot or tomato
wouldn’t savor every bite?
Programs such as this too often
get bogged down in the details and
the legalities and turf wars. Plotting
out a garden-size area that gets sun
and is close to a water source would
be the fi rst step. That should be very
easy to do with the guidance of the
school principal and the district’s fa-
cilities offi ce.
Next would be soliciting do-
nations for the supplies needed to
build a raised bed, then the tools
and the seeds.
The systems we have in place
raise too many obstacles to a sim-
ple project such as this. It could be
completed if we have the vision and
the will to do it.
It is important and timely to add
good food to the menu that is of-
fered. As the adage goes, give a man
a fi sh he eats for a day, teach a man
to fi sh he eats for a lifetime. If we
cultivate good eating habits in our
children now there will be fewer
health problems in their future.
—LAZ
editorial
A sobering visit
By LYNDON ZAITZ
I went to Los Angeles
last week for some sun-
shine and warmth. There
wasn’t much of that but I
did come away thought-
ful. I wanted to visit sev-
eral art museums that
weekend but all had lines
out the door due to free admission
Saturday. I eschewed art and em-
braced history.
My friend and I headed for the
Museum of Tolerance on the west
side. Though most visitors seek the
entertainment southern California
has to offer, a visit to this museum
should be required.
In addition to the regular displays
was a Anne Frank exhibition. We all
think we know the story, Dutch girl,
hiding in an attic, captured, killed
by the Nazis. Some of that is true,
other points not so much—she and
her sister Margot died of ill health
while in a camp, two weeks before
it was liberated by the Allies.
Before we walked through the
Anne Frank exhibit we viewed doz-
ens of videos, displays and writings
that addressed intolerance, not just
against Jews but all people—blacks,
Muslims, you name it.
All the exhibits at the museum
are powerful and as thought-pro-
voking as it is meant to be. Only
the most entrenched bigot can walk
out of that museum without feel-
ing a bit ashamed about how they
treated someone who was different
at some point. The museum is not
political correctness runamok, it is a
profound statement about humanity
and how respect and dignity are key
to achieving peace.
Much of the main exhibition
space is devoted to the Holocaust—
how Adolph Hilter rose to power.
He was elected Chancellor by the
people in 1933 by playing on the
German people’s anger at their lot
after World War I; he and the Nazis
played all of Germany’s ills on the
Jews.
There are videos of Kristallnacht
(the night shops owned by Jews
were looted and destroyed by the
National Socialist Party with the
support of Aryan Germans). There
are displays of artifacts fashioned in
concentration camps by
imprisoned Jews for their
religious rites. It is all very
sobering. And scary. Scary
to realize what man does
to man for reasons many
don’t understand to this
day.
There are many photo-
graphs of the small children round-
ed up with their parents and sent
off to work or concentration camps.
Beautiful little children whose only
crime was they were born Jewish.
The mass operation of wiping Jews
off the face of the earth resulting in
the Final Solution.
Going through the Anne Frank
exhibit I was struck by the maturity
of this 13-year-old girl who wrote
so beautifully. She was a prolifi c
writer, sending letters to her cousins
and of course her diary. She wrote
of her daily life (before and after she
and her family hid in that attic) in a
way that puts you right there.
The most amazing aspect of my
visit to the museum was a chance
meeting with Angelina. At fi rst I
thought she was just another muse-
um visitor, sitting down and taking
a rest. Angelina, 88, is a survivor. A
German Jew, she was sent to a camp
in Estonia at the age of seven. She
never saw her family again and her-
self had been sent to seven different
camps.
Angelina was spry and well-spo-
ken. I could have talked with her
for hours but I only shared a few
minutes with her. Before me was a
living reminder of modern history’s
most tragic events.
There were many students tour-
ing the museum that day. I asked
one boy what he thought of the
museum and he said it was neat.
I told him the same thing is hap-
pening today in a place called Syria
(of which he had never heard). My
parting words to that one boy was
to pay attention to the world, be in-
formed.
A visit to the museum may not
be southern California fun, but it is
southern California necessary.
on my
mind
(Lyndon Zaitz is publisher of the
Keizertimes.)
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Salem, Oregon
The American Dream has not been stolen
By MICHAEL GERSON
There is one issue on which the
whole ideological range of campaign
2016 seems to agree. “The American
Dream is dead,” says Donald Trump.
“For many, the American Dream has
become a nightmare,” says Bernie
Sanders.
Even discounting for the apoca-
lyptic mood of many candidates, this
is a justifi ed concern. A way of life in
which increased productivity resulted
in higher wages and a realistic shot at
economic advancement is fragile or
failing. For as many as 40 percent of
Americans, work now means a series
of part-time, temporary, on-call and
contract jobs. The old benefi t packag-
es and promotion pathways are largely
gone. Life has instability, worry and
toxic stress at its core.
For those who criticize populist
candidates, it is doubly important to
understand and address the causes
of populist discontent. One of those
causes is pervasive, warranted eco-
nomic anxiety.
The political divide emerges in
how this challenge is explained—a di-
vision that does not lie between par-
ties or even ideologies. Some believe
the American Dream has been stolen.
It may have been an inside job, done
by Wall Street or wealthy political do-
nors. Or it may have been the work
of outsiders such as illegal immigrants,
the Mexican government or Chinese
competitors. But our economic prob-
lem is viewed as effectively a crime.
As economic analysis, this is gener-
ally wrong, shallow or partial. But it
is the political consequences that con-
cern me.
If the American Dream has been
stolen, the main purpose of politics is
not to propose policies that ameliorate
this problem or
that; it is to de-
fi ne, fi ght and
defeat enemies
who have sto-
len the dream.
This approach
to public life is
inherently per-
sonal. Our economic problems have
faces. They may be owned by sneering
billionaires, or have a more Latino or
Asian aspect. But they certainly don’t
look like us. They are the scheming,
the exploiters, the guilty, the other.
This gives rise to a politics char-
acterized by anger, retribution and
enmity. It has the chemical advan-
tage of lighting up the limbic system,
the emotional center of the brain. If
I remember Psych 101 correctly, this
portion of the brain includes the hy-
pothalamus, which regulates the “Four
F’s” -- fi ghting, fl eeing, feeding and ...
mating.
A hypothalamic politics is not ori-
ented toward consensus. In any eco-
nomic diagnosis that involves fi ghting
the bad guys, progress is a zero-sum
game. Some must lose for the virtuous
many to win. And this requires not
persuasion but revolution -- a word
that some presidential candidates use
promiscuously.
There are many problems here, but
the worst is misdiagnosis, because it
undermines the possibility of produc-
tive change. The American Dream has
not been stolen. It has been under-
mined by a vast economic transition
that has placed American workers in
competition with talented workers
around the world, and replaced whole
categories of labor with new technol-
ogies. This has resulted in a consistent
downward pressure on wages and a
other
views
ruthless demand for higher skills. For
many communities, it has meant a
more or less permanent recession.
The effective collapse of the blue-
collar economy has come at the same
time that working-class family struc-
tures have dramatically weakened and
community institutions -- which once
provided assistant or substitute parents
-- have fallen apart. Some social scien-
tists emphasize one part of this prob-
lem or another, but family, community
and economic challenges seem related
to one another in complex ways. It is
an “all of the above” problem.
This is the real-world context for
effective policy. People need the skills,
support structure and human capital
to succeed in a modern economy. This
is defi nitely not an explanation that
elicits a hormonal response. But it is
the shared premise of serious policy
thinkers on the center right and the
center left, presenting the possibility of
compromise and agreement. It is pos-
sible to shape an innovative role for
government that empowers individu-
als, increases the rewards for work and
respects the important place of family
and community.
This might be the productive sub-
stance of a presidential race between
Hillary Clinton and Marco Ru-
bio (or Jeb Bush, or John Kasich). It
would probably not be the outcome
of Trump vs. Sanders. But the actual
problems of our economy will not be
solved by barbed wire on our south-
ern border, or by putting Wall Street
villains in shackles. It will require poli-
ticians who call Americans to the ram-
parts of an evolution -- educating and
equipping all our citizens, one by one,
for a different and diffi cult economy.
In that, there should be no enemies.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Teach teachers better than we are now
Governor Kate Brown informs
us she will appoint an “education
innovation offi cer.” This appoin-
tee will have no clout but will have
the backing of the two state-level
education agencies and must possess
ears the size of an elephant as this
gubernatorial appointee will have as
an assignment to listen to the state’s
school district offi cials and members
of the communities they serve.
It’s hard to imagine what, if
anything of substance or conse-
quence, will become of this; that
is, whether it’s just another Kitzha-
ber-like boondoggle. First and fore-
most, to make any real difference
this time around, the state would
have to make drastic changes to the
way teachers are prepared to teach.
The way things are done now, in
our teacher-training institutions,
each aspiring wannabe must ma-
triculate a four-year collection of
often disjointed subject- matter
courses. The four-year stint is then
followed by a year’s time invested in
education courses.
Unfortunate
to
the
out-
come, most of the fi fth college year,
that also earns a Masters degree, is
simply more course work taught
by professors who usually have not
been in a grades K-12 classroom for
years. Only during the last two
months of the fi fth year, the gradu-
ate works with a classroom teach-
er—who volunteers to serve in this
capacity—although they may or may
not be an effective teacher. Further,
that teacher is too often not super-
vised in the endeavor. Soon, the
“graduate” is teaching on their own
with minimal training to know how
to succeed, except mainly by instinct.
If Gover-
nor
Brown
wants
to
make a dif-
ference to the
quality of ed-
ucation in this
state,
she’d
change the preparation of teachers.
Under a new order of things, public
colleges and universities in the state
would no longer offer fi fth-year
teacher preparation courses; rather,
these public colleges would serve
strictly as clearinghouses and readi-
ness assessors. This role would have
them work with school districts to
fi nd highly qualifi ed teachers to
serve as mentors to those who want
to become a teacher. After a year’s
time with a veteran teacher in a
classroom setting, the novice would
be assessed by a team of qualifi ed
professionals hired from the ranks of
recognized-as-outstanding teachers
who wish to work at designing and
implementing assessment tools to
determine whether a novice is ready
for a classroom of their own.
As for a state innovation offi cer
going out to talk to superintendents
and other school management types,
among the teachers and townsfolk
they may talk to, the highest school
offi cers are typically entrenched
traditionalists who will say and do
whatever needs to be said and shown
to maintain the status quo and their
positions. To really get at what needs
to change to deliver education at the
most effective level, a state offi cer
must be interested in seeing to it
that change is taking place from ef-
forts to better prepare our teachers
for classroom dynamics and learning
gene h.
mcintyre
leadership.
This effort to improve public ed-
ucation in Oregon is going to have
to receive the time and attention
in many more ways than the laissez
faire treatment the likes of which our
former governor paid to his educa-
tion reforms. If changes come to pass
then we’ve got a wholesale sweeping
away of what’s been done to a whol-
ly new way of doing things. Many
people in the state must be involved,
not just a handful of big-time cam-
paign contributors with no edu-
cation experience. The training
of school administrators at all lev-
els must accompany any reform of
classroom teacher training changes
as those folks now are too typically a
combination ambitious politician
and total autocrat.
Since World War II, the U.S. has
fallen behind many other developed
nations One of the top reasons is the
way we train our teachers and ad-
ministrators. If only our politicians
would back off from their winless
ways of trying to reform education
and get those people directly in-
volved with it: Those teachers who
have the experience and know
how to produce successful results.
When people do again what’s al-
ways been done then it’s called futil-
ity. Unless Governor Kate Brown
does a lot more than what she’s plan-
ning to do via a state innovation of-
fi cer, we’ll be at the same place a year
or two from now when failure again
is the expensive outcome and few if
any educational improvements are
made available to our kids.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)