Protest is a great American tradition. But it is not a good in and of itself. It must spring from justified anger and attempt to right real wrongs. Otherwise it is just emotions packaged as political speech and wastes time and taxpayer money in police monitoring.
Protesters, mainly Baltimore City high school students, detained Tuesday in front of the State House belong tothe hype without substance variety of objectors.
Let?s start with their main premise ? that the governor allegedly “cut” more than $300 million to Maryland schools and that he abandoned Baltimore City Public Schools.
The state will have pumped an extra $3.5 billion since 2003 into state public schools by the end of the year as a result of the Thornton education law. Baltimore City has been a major recipient of aid, as one of the goals of the law was to equalize education funding throughout the state. City students enjoy some of the highest per pupil spending in the state in 2007 at nearly $11,000, higher than any surrounding county except Howard. And Gov. O?Malley?s proposed budget increased by $184 million spending on K-12 education in the 2009 budget. So what “cuts” are they talking about?
Second, protesters did not say why they need more money. Should it be for tutoring or principal bonuses or after-school programs? Demanding more money with no plan for how it should be used shows ignorance, not civic engagement.
And third, they targeted the wrong man. If they want more money, they should stand outside city schools headquarters on North Avenue each day demanding administration cuts from CEO Andres Alonso. The city has 13.1 professional services staff per 1,000 students, the most in the region ? and the number keeps rising even as the student population shrinks. If test scores are anything to show for the bureaucratic bloat, it does not help students.
The adult supervisors who chaperoned students toAnnapolis should have given them better counsel. By asking students to research their claims and define what they wanted to accomplish, they would have given them a valuable lesson in how to think clearly and express themselves with conviction.
Instead, students learned “just doing something,” even something without merit, will win attention. That?s hardly a lesson worth instilling in students, who must cultivate self-control, discipline and intellectual creativity to succeed in school and in life.
