The future of our city is at risk. If Measure S fails, Santa Monica schools will be thrown into disarray. I should know. I’ve been teaching in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District for 29 years.
Think of a man asked to build a house. Imagine his only tool is a paintbrush. The man may manage to create a picture of a house, but this image will be two-dimensional, unable to support weight or offer shelter. So it will be for students and teachers. Without the proper tools – books, paper, desks, microscopes, calculators, computers, libraries – we can but create a poor picture of education. The doors may remain open and classes continue to meet, but learning will suffer.
Back in the 17th century, Cotton Mather proclaimed that “A Good School deserves to be call’d the very Salt of the Town that hath it.” For years Santa Monica’s schools have indeed been the salt of our town. Generations of residents have sent their children to the same schools they attended, sometimes to the same teachers. The community supported its schools because it understood that without schools “wherein the Youth may by able Masters be Taught the Things that are necessary to qualify them for future Serviceableness,” a community founders, even one as rich in tradition as Santa Monica.
Mather goes on to explain that “the Devil cannot give a greater Blow to the Reformation among us, than by causing Schools to Languish under Discouragements.” Unfortunately, that is exactly what will happen if Measure S fails. How can a teacher hold her students to high standards when she has no books? Can you imagine a greater discouragement than the dismantling of Santa Monica’s music program?
“Where schools are not vigorously and Honourably Encouraged, whole Colonies will sink apace into a Degenerate and Contemptible Condition, and at last become horribly Barbarous. If you would not betray your Posterity into the very Circumstances of Savages, let Schools have more Encouragement.” Invest in posterity. Support your schools.
Carol Jago