The Ant and the Grasshopper

And now, an allegory.  A first for iBlog America.

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

An American Tale

OLD SKOOL VERSION:

The ANT works hard in the

withering heat all summer long,

building his house and

laying up supplies for the winter.



The GRASSHOPPER laughs

and dances and plays

the summer away.


Come winter, the ANT

is warm and well fed.



The GRASSHOPPER

has no food or shelter,

so he dies out in the cold.

OLD Moral of the story:

Hard work deserves respect.

Cutting corners leads to ruin.

-------

NEW SKOOL VERSION:



There is a beautiful land

named “America.”

It is a wonderful place,

filled with natural treasures

and opportunity.

In it lives two citizens:

the ANT and the GRASSHOPPER.

THE ANT

The ANT is born into a family

with money and connections.

The ANT goes to private schools

and his uncle helps him attend Harvard.

By age 35, the ANT has a great job,

a house in town and one at the beach,

drives a great car, and investments.

He vacations in the Caymans.

The ANT

believes in the “Wealth Filter.”

Those who have or make money

are strong and worthy of respect.

Those who do not

are weak and deserve to fail.

THE GRASSHOPPER

The GRASSHOPPER is born into a family

with debt and obligations.

He goes to public school

and attends any college he can get into.

By age 35, the GRASSHOPPER has two jobs,

a big college loan and mortgage,

and two kids.

He vacations at the pub

or on the weekends.

The GRASSHOPPER

believes in the “Value Filter.”

Those who show value to others

should be respected and protected.

Many things of value

never generate wealth.

This is the story of the ANT and the GRASSHOPPER,

in THREE PARTS.

PART ONE

After a string of beautiful summers,

a hard winter surprises everyone

in the land. One icy day,

the ANT calls a press conference

And blames the cost of the cold weather

on the GRASSHOPPER.

The ANT

goes on TV and says

“The GRASSHOPPER laughed

and danced the summer away

while we ANTS were busy working.

Now, the silly GRASSHOPPER

wants to raise taxes to pay for

the lazy people during this

terrible cold weather.”

The ANT raises his fist and says,

“No one should have to pay

for other people. If you can't

heat your house,

that's your problem!

We should stop helping people

who aren't strong enough

to make a profit

to keep themselves warm!

The strong should win

and the weak should lose!”

The GRASSHOPPER,

who doesn't really follow politics,

sips a beer after his long day

at work and thinks the ANT is crazy.

The GRASSHOPPER turns to his

wife and says,

“Everyone was chilling this summer.
Even the ANTS were partying.
That's ok!  We all work a lot."

The GRASSHOPPER went on,
"But this winter is hard.

People need to help each other out.

Not everyone is born rich and healthy.

How about the elderly?

Retired and injured veterans?

Some things that never turn a

profit are important, too.

Firehouses and police stations

don't make profits,

neither do bridges and schools.”

The GRASSHOPPER turns on the

baseball game and opens

another beer. He goes on,

“Even an ANT needs help

when things get bad or go wrong.”

“One day, I'm going to become an ANT,”

says the GRASSHOPPER's son.

“Not unless you win the lottery,”

says the GRASSHOPPER's mom.

“Or marry somebody rich!”

says the GRASSHOPPER's daughter.

But the winter ends and summer comes,

and everyone is happy

and stops talking about it.

PART TWO

The next winter, things get even worse.

It snows for two weeks straight

and everyone's pipes freeze.

One particularly cold and gray day,

the ANT calls a

press conference.

“GRASSHOPPERISM is about

giving handouts to those

who do not deserve it.

Our society should stop paying

so much for schools, health care,

regulation, and safety for the lazy

GRASSHOPPER.

If it doesn't make money,

it should fail!”

The ANT raises his fist and says,

“We need to lower taxes!

Your mistakes are YOUR fault!

The ANT Way is simple:

every ANT for himself.”

America is stunned

by the ANT's brilliance.

It is easy to understand

how the strong should win

and the weak should lose.

The MEDIA gets

high ratings showing video

of GRASSHOPPERS

who commit crimes,

do stupid things, and are lazy.

The MEDIA also gets

high ratings showing video

of ANTS

who spend lots of money,

do exclusive things,

and hang with cool people.

The MEDIA gets

the best ratings

when an ANT fails at something.

Everyone on TV says

“look at how that ANT

ended up failing

like a GRASSHOPPER.

What a loser!”

Books fly off the shelves

to become best-sellers:

-Pinheads and ANTS

-Godless: The Church

of GRASSHOPPERISM

-The Audacity of

the GRASSHOPPER

-The Secret Connection

Between the GRASSHOPPER

and Islamic Fundamentalism

- God Helps ANTS

Who Help Themselves

The GRASSHOPPER,

shivering in the winter air,

listens and thinks,

“Maybe the ANT is right.

Life would be better if

I had more money.

I hate taxes. I'm tired of

taking care of other people.

IT'S MY MONEY!”

The GRASSHOPPER gets mad

at other grasshoppers.

“GRASSHOPPERISM

is ruining our country.”

PART THREE

The Winter Election shows

grasshoppers

talking like ants.

The ANT Party wins big!

Taxes drop to historically

low levels for everyone--

but especially for the ANT.

The ANT uses his money

and connections

to lobby Congress

to rewrite the tax code so that

ANT spending and expenses

can be deducted.

Regulations are lifted

on businesses so that profits

can soar.

The ANT hires an

accountant buddy from

Yale to shelter

ANT family money in

offshore accounts.

The ANT laughs at

how silly

the GRASSHOPPER is

to not know how to do this.

After the election, the

GRASSHOPPER buys a

big house. He takes

out a loan

to act more like the ANT.

“The ANT Way is awesome!”

the GRASSHOPPER's family

tells him.

“Our car sucks! Can we

get a cooler one?”

the GRASSHOPPER's son asks.

The next winter is

one of the coldest and iciest ever.

Foreclosures sweep the nation.

It turns out that

the savvy ANT has been

selling bad mortgages

and loans

to naïve grasshoppers

who can't afford them.

Everywhere, GRASSHOPPER

businesses go bankrupt.

When Big ANT Business

goes bankrupt,

the ANT uses his connections

in Congress to get a bailout

that he doesn't have

to pay back.

The ANT laughs at

how silly

the GRASSHOPPER is

to not know how to do this.

The GRASSHOPPER

gets laid off.

He finds out his mother

has cancer

but insurance won't cover it

because they call it a

“pre-existing condition.”

The GRASSHOPPER

applies for unemployment

and moves in

with his mom to take

care of her while she dies.

“You're and pathetic, Dad”

the GRASSHOPPER's son

tells him.

“You are too weak to be an ANT!

You deserve to fail!”

The story ends with the ANT,

sipping a cocktail in The Caymans,

watching TV from his hot tub

in his luxury condo.

The MEDIA gets high ratings

showing stories of

schools, firehouses, and hospitals

closing down.

There are pictures

of bridges collapsing

and veterans and the elderly

not getting health care.

“Another gin and tonic, Jose”

the ANT politely asks the

GRASSHOPPER he hired

to be a housekeeper.

The ANT shakes his head

and thinks about

how silly the GRASSHOPPER

is to not know how to work harder.

NEW Moral of the story:

Everyone for him/herself.

Locking Up the Future

To hear this as a podcast, click here!

I get in trouble at my high school every once in a while. I admit it. Every few weeks, one of my many supervising administrators reminds me that I'm doing something wrong.

Hey, I'm like you. Unless you work for yourself, we have bosses who do this to us. It's the nature of management: telling people how to do things “right.” Even people who work for themselves have bosses who tell them how to do things right. These people are called “customers.”

Anyway, I get in trouble because I don't lock my door to my office. Students can go into my office without supervision, which is bad, I am told. So, I listen to my bosses. I lock my door. Locking my door is good, I am told.

I must admit something else: I'm not sure locking my door is good.

To a Hammer, Everything Is a Nail

What's the purpose of a locked door? What is the effect of a locked door?

Locking things up makes sense. You have something valuable and you want to protect it. Locking it up is brilliant-- you alone (or those you share the key with) have control, along with the security that you know your stuff is safe.

In this way, a lock is simply a barrier or a boundary that one can control- and we love them in our schools.

This should be the end of the conversation: locks and limits make sense. But it isn't because people learn how to neutralize the lock. There are a number of ways to get around a lock, and there is no shortage of time spent on this problem.

Let's consider ways in which we get around locks outside of school. While doing your taxes in the last month, you (or your accountant) spent some time finding ways to neutralize the lock of taxation with “deductibles.” Isn't that what a deductible is-- a lock pick? Any loophole is a lock neutralizer.

“You're not allowed to park here” Ok. I'll just throw on my hazard lights and run in and out of the store before a cop can bust me. Lock picked!

“The game is sold out” Sure it is. I'll just call my uncle Larry, the VP of marketing at the stadium, and I'll get seats. Lock picked!

“It's buy one taco, get one free-- limit one coupon per visit” No worries. I'll buy my taco, get one free, then get back in line and do it again as many times as I like. Lock picked!

A locked door doesn't just protect things. A locked door creates an arena, a playing field in which people are incentivized to neutralize the lock.

A locked door makes people into lock pickers.

You Are Not Invited

Locked doors protect kids and school property, we say. But locked doors discourage engagement and undermine self-responsibility. “You're not supposed to be here,” locked doors tell kids. “You are an untrusted guest with limited access.” Kids don't need to take care of anything because they aren't in charge of anything. Locking things up limits participation in the maintenance of a community. A place that locks things up is more interested in safety and control than in engendering responsibility and rational risk-taking.

Get Rid of Locked Doors?

Heck, no. It's not unreasonable to imagine that kids could do real damage to property or themselves if we didn't lock things up. The chemicals in the chemistry lab actually COULD hurt someone. The computer lab, filled with equipment, would likely be robbed or ruined if left unlocked.

Some locked doors are good-- but we must be extremely careful what we lock up. We must bravely attempt to leave as many doors unlocked as possible. We must replace our culture of locked doors with a culture of stewardship. An overwhelming number of teenagers long to be in charge of things. Let's make our schools places of stewardship and involvment.

Paraphrasing Adam Smith, chief apologist for laissez-faire government, I say: the fewer the locked doors, the more robust the growth. Let's lean towards “hands off” regulation in schools. As it is, we're just locking up the children.

Doors and curiosity have a special relationship. A locked door only promotes curiosity about how to break in to a room. An unlocked door facilitates curiosity of all kinds, welcomes people in and becomes a portal for wonder, discovery, and community.

Sigh. Looks like I might get in trouble again.

Wrong Story, Wisconsin

School's got 99 problems and money ain't one.

I'm not old enough to remember a time when the media referred to groups of teachers acting as “political demonstrators.” As a public school teacher, it's a bit unsettling-- but, I can't help but feel a bit of apathy about it. If you've seen a hundred protests, you've seen them all.

In fact, I suspect the whole “protest movement” looks a bit passe to people under the age of 50. On TV, I've seen marches for everything: civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, black men's rights, white men's rights, Puerto Ricans' rights, gun rights, Glenn Beck's rights, Howard Stern's rights, potheads' rights, and recently, moderates' rights (thanks, Jon Stewart).

I've also seen marches against everything: gun control, abortion, gay marriage, Bush, Obama, the war(s), oil companies, liberal media, Fox News, taxes, the government, and, sadly, dead soldiers (thanks, Fred Phelps). Protest marches don't seem to mean, well, anything. Protest marches often look fun, like a cool party or something, or scary, like a group of wackos, but they don't seem effective.

Protest marches just seem to highlight divisions. And, in this case, they are keeping us from focusing.

The Wrong Problem Problem

As the palpable tensions in public education bubble to the surface in the midwest, the whole country is finding that old arthritis of education woes more difficult to ignore. It's foolish to try and blame anyone, of course, but absolutely unsurprising battle lines are being drawn. The easiest narrative for both politicians and the media (our time's most powerful storytellers) is that the tension grows out of a clear rift in our country-- between those who support smaller government and those who support bigger government.

This story of big government versus small, of left versus right, will only keep distracting us from the cancerous problems of education. I'm not saying that we don't have a money problem. We do. But it is NOT the big problem. And it has to stop driving our discourse about improving education.

Here's what we keep talking about:

1.People want lower taxes

2.American students are getting whooped by students in other countries

3.Teachers' pensions are out of step with other professions

4.There are too many bad teachers

5.Teachers have “short” work days and have summers off, holidays, etc.

The budget constraints are making it more difficult to ignore the big problems. Look, when your mom gets an aggressive form of cancer, you don't say “what's the most cost-effective way we can save her?” Sure, you have to talk about money in that situation, but it's not the ONLY or BIGGEST concern.

Raising taxes, lowering taxes, abolishing unions-- none of these “corrections” address improving education. Sure, we can try and save money. But when do we start talking about better education?

Here's what we SHOULD be talking about:

1.Attracting and keeping great teachers-- and making them the most important element in our schools

2.Evaluating students to test skills and critical thinking, not regurgitation

3.Rebuilding our school infrastructure so that it serves the primacy of learning (not student containment)

4.Resisting the colossal error of making education a “customer service” industry

As long as the battle is between politicians and union members, we're going to have the same, tired arguments with the same, feckless results.

Education is the mother f#$%ing future of the country! When can we get serious about fixing it?

For some of my ideas about fixing education, read my fun-to-read (and smartly handled) four part series “Scapegoats and Saviors.” And I barely swear at all in these articles.

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