It’s strange that there is an audience for this blog that reaches all over the world, yet there are but a few people, locally, who read it (that I know of). I’ve been thinking about the likeliness that anything substantive will be accomplished by a lot of global-thinking bloggers who don’t make any local noise, because changes that matter happen on the ground.
For one thing, the Letters to the Editor of our local paper can give anything I write a circulation of several thousand readers on any given day – far more than Borderland. Becoming a School Board meeting regular is another idea I’ve been kicking around. I’ve written letters to the editor before, and since writing comes more naturally to me than public speaking, I dove into the letters-to-the-editor pool a few weeks ago.
The subject wasn’t Education, or testing, which are topics I’ve bitten on in the past. No, this time I got rolling on a problem that has been years in the making in our oil-rich state. Our 700 mile-long state of the art oil pipeline got a bit rusty and had to be shut down all of a sudden due to some nasty leaks. This, of course, means that our state will lose tax revenue due to NO OIL. The governor was busy with hiring freezes, and opening investigations. There was great potential for wringing of hands, gnashing of teeth, and election-year blame.
I remember that our state legislature did away with state income taxes in 1980, when the oil started bringing all those pennies from hell. This is a contentious issue here, as it is most places – the funding of government, the funding of schools – but it has it’s own quirky logic in a place where NOBODY has to pay. When oil prices are high, life is good. We all get a check every year for 1000 bucks. If you speak in favor of taxes, or in favor of dedicating oil money to education, the anti-taxers say, “You’re free to donate your check any day.” It goes back and forth with the other side, mainly the blood-sucking leaches with government jobs, like me, saying things like, “There’s no free lunch.” You get the picture.
So I was thinking about how maybe (I don’t really know) this pipeline glitch wouldn’t have been a fiscal emergency if we had some other source of state revenue. And then the local paper ran an editorial called Prudhoe Bay Questions. I took it as an open invitation to write my letter to the editor.
Questions
Aug. 10, 2006
To the editor:
Before the finger pointing and belt tightening gets serious, we might ask some questions in addition to those that appear in the Aug. 10 News-Miner editorial, “Prudhoe Bay questions.”
The News-Miner asked, “Did state and federal regulations fail to evolve with Prudhoe Bay’s aging to take into account the problems that come with growing old?” This is a good question, and prompts me to wonder.
Does the legislature, the administration, or the electorate bear any responsibility for government budget shortfalls by refusing any statewide taxes on either income or sales?
How much of our state budget would depend on oil revenues if we taxed ourselves like other states?
Can we declare this a fiscal emergency when we’ve nurtured a dependence on a single source of income for decades?
Can we regulate, litigate, and develop our way out of similar problems in the future?
Is the BP shutdown of Prudhoe Bay merely a technological breakdown, or is it also a social matter?
Doug Noon
I didn’t hear anything about it. No rebuttals or refutations. No echo – until today.
I got a letter from my Representative to the State House today. I was absolutely floored. It wasn’t a form letter.
Dear Doug,
Thank you for your recent letter to the editor. Your questions are all excellent; I hope people are thinking about them as they vote in November. Moreover, I’d like to see state legislators seriously address the overall social and economic impacts of Alaska’s revenue policies. We’ve now raised an entire generation of Alaskans that expects not only state services for nothing, but free money every October. That is unrealistic, unsustainable, and unhealthy. Keep asking those tough questions.Best Regards,
David
It was hand signed. And to think I almost tossed it unopened because it’s campaign season! David, you’ll be hearing from me directly. It’s nice to be heard by someone with an opinion that matters to me (even though the Democrats do get shamelessly bullied in Juneau).
I’m feeling encouraged to make more local noise.
8 Comments
So thinking locally and acting globally actually does work! I think the key to what you said is that you put your hand to up to accept responsibility. And that means you are thinking locally and talking locally, not simply accepting the one size approach determined by the Federal or State legislature or – heaven forfend – by ‘majority thinking’. If you’ve been round the block a few times, you begin to understand that it simply ain’t gonna fit all. And you know why.
I’ve written a bit about Indigenous policy – a vexed question now as ever in Australia – and, as a resident of Northern Australia (somewhat akin to living in Alaska, if a bit warmer most of the year) I see constantly the unforeseen impacts of centralist thinking.
Bureaucrats in our national capital are several hours away by jet passenger plane and light years away in consciousness. They persist in thinking that we exist for their amusement; there is little awareness that they exist to serve our needs and even less awareness that there are other imperatives in remote area living (not least of which are the Indigenous cultural imperatives, the place of people in land, land in culture and vice-versa), which thinking that is based in urban living simply cannot grasp.
The best those of us who live in remote areas can do, I guess, is keep hammering away at the need for policy to be flexible and responsive to people’s needs and not be dictated by considerations which are detremined solely bypolicy-makers and administrators.
To do otherwise is to collude in colonialism and, unfortunately, to allow yourself to be one of the colonised.
Michael, thanks for your contribution. I’ll enjoy reading your blog(s) because I see that there are, indeed, many parallels between our respective remote locations. The indigenous issues are strikingly similar. Alaska Native activists refer to New Zealand and Australian precendents when they’re trying to help us understand something that is happening here. I’m quite sure that indigenous difficulties with schooling are similar all over the world, also. Your last point, about avoiding collusion in colonialism, is what Borderland is mostly about.
I’ll keep putting my hand up
)
hi doug,
I’ve been thinking about the local / global dichotomy too.
If you are in a minority wanting to change the way things are and feeling isolated (more or less) then the global connection can help keep you sane, to know that there are others out there, with similar thoughts.
But, more than that, aren’t we in a world where national borders are starting to mean less and less. Why should our education systems, or anything else, be national or local these days? (there are good reasons but we need to spell them out and you are contributing to doing that and congrats for the local effort and results you report on in this blog)
Once anyone achieves a certain level of independence and self reliance then you can pick the best course in the world (eg. MIT open courseware). It is just outdated modes of certification, to keep local teachers and academics in jobs, that is holding this process back. I look forward to the day when the big fish in a little pond mentality becomes an isolated, rather than a mainstream, phenomenon.
I’ve recently been following Jay Rosen’s NewAssignment proposal to create a viable virtual newspaper. One point he made was about “distributed reporting,” where a bunch of people—dispersed but connected by the Net—could contribute knowledge in a manner that would be hard for a reporter or even two or three to duplicate. I wrote about this here
I can’t help but think that there should be an educational equivalent to “distributed reporting”
It is great that someone is listening. There is something bigger I would like to know though, something you cannot answer and I don’t expect you to. It’s just what sticks in my craw.
Okay, so the guy replied. He agreed, shared like sentiments. He seemd to care, and closes with “Keep asking those tough questions.” But there were no answers there. And for all of your great “tough” questions, he responds with a paragraph, and not a very informative one at that.
I would like to see someone actually answer you!
Hey, Rosie. You made me laugh. I’ll email him and see if he wants to try. The way I see it, even if nobody answers my questions, this would be a great opportunity to get a discussion started down in Juneau.
I agree!! It always makes me wonder however when you write a Letter to the {enter hoity-toity} if anyone else gets to see it – ever! Wait… let me back up a little. What I meant to wonder… is, I wonder if any of the powers that be read those columns.
Getting it out there, having it in the hands of everyone who does read it certainly is a start… and it all has to start somewhere. I’m all for that. I guess it just burns my [bleep] when the respons one receives is a ‘yes man’ types of an answer and now one that will actually help get the real discussins started or move it along further….
Know what I mean?
This reminds me of the old “if a tree falls in the forest…” question. Let’s see. If a letter to the editor falls in the legislature, and nobody mentioned it….did it make a noise?
We may have something here.
Hey Doug:
The discussion widens and that’s something worth hanging on to. While Bart Simpson took a while to register what the sound of one hand clapping meant, he was Stephen Hawking compared to some legislators. I was out bush in Arnhem Land last week and I’m going into desert country – south about 700km and a long drive – tomorrow. But I’m holding some thoughts on this discussion and I’ll be back at the end of the week.
Best wishes and thanks to Rosa for her contribution
Michael
One Trackback/Pingback
[...] So the edbloggosphere has been on a every other month rant about the sorry lack of initiative by politicos, school boards, school administrators and others, to try new approaches in education. Well I’ll add to the chorus. [...]
Post a Comment