{"id":1585,"date":"2010-05-16T08:40:32","date_gmt":"2010-05-16T12:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/?p=1585"},"modified":"2010-05-16T09:16:10","modified_gmt":"2010-05-16T13:16:10","slug":"train-lawmakers-like-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/train-lawmakers-like-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Walk the Walk: Train Lawmakers Like Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think that lawmakers should have to go through training, just like teachers do.\u00a0 Teachers are required to have many courses in education strategies, child development, special needs; and then they also have to do internships, and learn on the job before they take charge of a classroom.\u00a0 Lawmakers, on the other hand, are simply elected, and they serve based on whatever their experience or record may be.\u00a0 When I was on our Board of Education (School Committee) a few years back, not one of us was an educator; we were laypersons elected for what we believed and had done in the community.\u00a0 We were there as representatives of “the people” in town, and not as experts.\u00a0 We had to meet with and listen to the experts’ recommendations (the superintendent, the assistant superintendents, department chairs, etc.) as well as to weight what we knew the parents and students felt (ideally) and make our decisions based on all of that.\u00a0 A lot of responsibility and not a lot of expertise, but that is representative government.<\/p>\n

What made a difference for me back then was whenever we were invited to take part in an activity of a particular group or issue. For example, we would read to a random classroom anywhere in the school system, on Dr. Seuss’ birthday; it was kind of a symbol of how reading is important.\u00a0 The kids gathered around me; the teacher sitting off to the side, smiling.\u00a0 Me, trying to make this children’s book come alive to them.\u00a0 All in all, a small gesture, certainly one for the newspapers, and yet, not without its actual merit.\u00a0 Just the half hour I spent in that first grade classroom at a nearby school taught me so much that I didn’t know about teaching.\u00a0 It made it real to me.\u00a0 It made me stop and think next time anything to do with “first grade” or “literacy” or “large classrooms” or “challenging children” came up.\u00a0 However much more a School Committee member could attend events and meetings, made that much of a difference in our ability to represent because we had learned something firsthand, or at least, first fingertip.<\/p>\n

Training does not have to involve actually going somewhere like I did.\u00a0 I am reading Precious, based on the novel Push,<\/em><\/a> by Sapphire, and getting a tiny but vivid training in what it’s like to live around crack addicts, survive child abuse, navigate the Welfare system, become homeless.\u00a0 I thought I knew something about this just by reading newspapers but the thing is, reading Precious’ story is making me feel what it is like, just a small painful slice.\u00a0 I caught myself remembering some quick, summary judgment I had made about how “of course, a victim of rape should get an abortion,” and then thought about how Precious feels about baby Abdul, her child and her brother(!), and how she fights to keep him with her.\u00a0 This is the first time I understood how that could be so.\u00a0 I also realized how much our social programs helped save her life.\u00a0 So easy to talk about Waste and Big Government in the same breath, but do we ever stop to think about the millions who are actually helped by Big Government?\u00a0 Precious was a victim, whose life would have remained shit in a swamp if she had not been able to collect Welfare, go to an Alternative Public School, and live at a halfway house.\u00a0 All funded by the US Government.\u00a0 That right there is a modern-day miracle of how the system works<\/em>. And your tax dollars are going towards repairing the world.<\/p>\n

So I got to thinking about how legislators have to vote on item after item with little knowledge about it, and certainly without any training around it.\u00a0 They come to power with their beliefs already intact.\u00a0 Often based on ignorance, or worse, on hatred.\u00a0 But imagine if legislators were made to teach a class for twenty minutes, or work in an adult residence for a little while, or sit behind a Welfare desk.\u00a0 What if they had to meet with the parties that would be affected by their vote?\u00a0 Cutting the education budget?\u00a0 Before you do, come in and teach in that overcrowded classroom, just for twenty minutes.\u00a0 Against healthcare for all?\u00a0 Live with an autism family whose insurance refuses autism therapy coverage and who cannot afford any interventions and whose child is in one of those overcrowded classrooms.\u00a0 Against environmental protection?\u00a0 Spend a little time in a country where there are no EPA controls and have fun breathing.<\/p>\n

The legislator’s life would become much fuller; he’d have less time for meetings with wealthy and powerful lobbyists.\u00a0 His schedule would be much more finely drawn.\u00a0 His brain would be stretched and tired; his heart would be soft and worn.\u00a0 And his votes would be infinitely more intelligent and compassionate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think that lawmakers should have to go through training, just like teachers do.\u00a0 Teachers are required to have many courses in education strategies, child development, special needs; and then they also have to do internships, and learn on the job before they take charge of a classroom.\u00a0 Lawmakers, on the other hand, are simply […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-pz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1587,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}