Five Messages About Public Education That Don’t Sell (and Ones That Will)

Jeff Bryant, via a kind Laura Chern email:

Thanks for having me here today. I’m feeling a little out of context at a meeting for the Young Elected Officials. And it’s not because I’m not an elected official.
But I suppose there are some advantages and benefits to aging. Wisdom, however, is not one of them, as the demographics of Fox News bear out.
In aging you have experiences that you can reflect and act on over time and experiences that are unique to your generational cohort. For instance, how many of you have deep expertise in junk mail? That happens to be my work in trade as I’ve been in that business for over 20 years; although, the industry is nothing like what it once was and is rapidly going the way of the dinosaurs.
Also, how many of you were in school in the South during the early years of forced integration of the races? I was in second grade in Dallas, Texas and remember vividly the day they bused the poor kids across town to my school.
When they brought the poor kids into my class, there was a girl named Brenda who didn’t have on any shoes. And there was a little boy named Jerald who still sucked his thumb and was basically dressed in rags.