Educrats: hold the starch, it’s too brittle.

As the financial crunch gets, er, crunchier, and as competition for resources here gets heated up, we’ll be flooded by entrenched interests making their cases to dig deeper into our pockets. Fair enough. In the wake of the Public School System (PSS) releasing the dismal results from the SAT 9 standardized tests, we can expect a tidal flood of discourse centered on PSS.

But as a dull, dishwater gray ocean of mealy-mouthed huff and puff swirls around us, it’s useful to keep in mind that nobody has to be at the total mercy of the educrats. They only have as much as power as you let them have. The community is, in fact, ripe with resources that any kid can use.

I remember when my rotting publik skool district in Illinois got too odious to bear. Mom, seeing the moron I turned out to be, jerked my little brother out of Big Brother’s realm and placed him into a private, religious school (wasn’t even our religion, either!).

Meanwhile, I availed myself of the brain power at our church, where the college students held reading groups for the younger ones, and where help with homework was always available.

In the Boy Scouts, as we’d pursue different “merit badges” and “skill awards,” we got to interact with local professionals who tested us and tutored us on various topics. A similar organization called the Civil Air Patrol (sort of a flying Boy Scouts) held classes in aerodynamics and such things, which was sure a leap up the intellectual ladder for a lot of us.

There’s no Civil Air Patrol here, but Saipan, just like my hometown, offers a lot of educational resources–free for the taking–outside of the greedy clutches of the educrats.

How to open this world of educational opportunities? Wade into it, ask questions, look around for yourself. It’s not a passive proposition, and, to be sure, not as easy as merely dumping the offspring off at school like so much dry cleaning to be done, ready for pickup at four o’clock sharp, and hold the starch. (Starch makes things brittle, crusty, and unyielding, much like some publik edukation bureaucracies.)

If you’re concerned about education, then chances are your fellow church parishioners are, too. Under the steeple is a gold mine of intellect; doctors, for example, and engineers, and don’t forget the clergy itself. The church was educating people long before the educrats slithered from the shadows, and it will be around long after they limp into obscurity like prehistoric reptiles.

Our local library is certainly no dinosaur. It enjoys a lively selection of books (free for the borrowing). It boasts an outstanding Internet and computer facility (free for the using). And it recently received a grant from Tan Holdings which, tied together with some federal money, funded a CD-ROM tower for doing research via computer (no charge to use that, either). Free, free, free. All you have to do is ask.

In fact, “all things wise and wonderful” are ours for the taking. Those who want to purchase it, pre-digested, bleached, sifted, and boxed, are, of course, welcome to do so. Like coconuts, though, and fishes too, the real intellectual stuff you catch for yourself is a lot more wholesome. It has sweet meat that is untainted by the poison of bureaucracy, and the act of gathering it is just as fulfilling as the act of consuming it.