Seed Corn

I have a photograph of my grandmother, in 1890, sitting on the steps of her school in Dillon, Oklahoma, where she was the schoolteacher. She went to that school from Indiana, traveling the last 50 miles by buckboard. The trip was across country and there were no roads.

I heard many fascinating stories. One of those stories concerned seed corn. After the corn harvest, some of the crop was set aside, as seed corn to be sown for next year's crop. After a long hard winter when everything became scares, there was always the temptation to grind the seed corn for meal on the assumption that more corn could be obtained in time for planting. That was a bad assumption, and many pioneers, lost everything, as the result.

We are today in South Carolina, eating our seed corn. There will be a new "crops" of young people emerging as adults. We may decide not to provide a quality education for all our public school children. We may decide to provide quality education for a select few. We can therefore not expect to have a quality harvest. Our children are the seeds we sow and the harvest we reap.

Most South Carolinians are unaware that our legislature is seriously considering the devaluation of public education. Unfortunately this devaluation goes by many different names none of which reflect the reality. Charter schools, school vouchers, no child left behind are code words for a dual school system.

One of the issues is money. Affluent South Carolinians just don't want to spend the money. Another issue is racial. As a state we have yet to accept the fact that rural poor minority children are quite capable of academic excellence. More to the point it is expedient to hold such a view.

Under consideration is the creation of a dual education system for South Carolina. One system for the affluent and the blessed, and the other for those leftover, poor children, children of color. One argument is that the state cannot afford to fully fund public education. Yet another argument is that we should prioritize education with the focus on the achievers and discount all others. South Carolina has yet to make a committed and sustained effort to educate its rural poor. How can we make that judgment without having tried?

Are we simply considering the value of cornbread, even with molasses, compared with the value of our future harvests?

My grandmother's school was created, with private funds by the way, to teach the children of the Southern Cheyenne Indians who had just been relocated from their ancestral home at the point of the gun. I'm sure these children didn't test well. Today, 114 years later, on average they still don't test well. This in spite of the fact that many Native Americans are recognized scholars with earned advanced academic credentials.

What can be measure are the legions of teachers who dedicated their lives to the education of all children. and did so at some personal sacrifice. We can measure the opportunity provided to those children by those sacrifices. Why then do we denigrate public education for what we, as a society at large, been unwilling to do rather than celebrate what we have accomplished? Why indeed.

Let there be no misunderstanding where I stand. My Anglo ancestors provided me with a unique advantage denied many others. I have a moral obligation to all children, not simply from a sense of fairness, but also from enlightened self interest.

We in South Carolina have never provided sufficient funding for the rural poor. We have made our rural poor invisible. This is a critical time in the history of South Carolina. There are well organized and well funded advocates for a dual school system. There is also a huge body of citizens who are unaware und uninvolved in the behind the scenes struggle for the future of South Carolina.

If we are about the business of dismantling our system of quality education for all children, let's at least be honest about it and call things by their right name. Let us have an informed and open dialog about our future. I trust the people of South Carolina, given the opportunity, to make the right choice. How about you?