Shaping the Mecklenburg County Budget: Your Important Role

As explained in a blog post from this weekend, my letter to the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), if you live in Mecklenburg County, then you have a vested interest in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. This is true whether or not you have a connection to CMS (through employment, a child who is a student, etc), because the health of our schools will be a significant determining factor in the health of our city.

Good schools help to make a city vibrant and increase its economic viability more than any other public service (or, arguably, anything, since the private sector is dependent on a good pool of potential employees, and good schools attract and help to retain families, especially those with young children).

The better off Charlotte is, the better off you will be, personally. The more businesses and individuals come here (or stay here), the more employment opportunities there will be, the lower unemployment, crime, etc. Likewise, the converse is true, and bad schools will ultimately cause downward economic pressure and urban decay.

On June 15, the BOCC will be voting on the final budget, so they need to hear from you as soon as possible, while they are still putting the budget together.

Schools, the Choice for Charlotte (An Open Letter to the Board of County Commissioners)

"By...[selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated."
--Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782

To the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners:

Most of us have seen the inspiring movie Stand and Deliver, the true story of Jaime Escalante, a teacher who did the seemingly-impossible when he built one of the country’s finest calculus programs in East L.A. Who among us, if given the opportunity to go back in time and sit in one of Escalante’s classes, would say no? Few, I’d bet.

What the movie doesn’t tell you is what it couldn’t: After it was made, a significant amount of bureaucratic wrangling caused Escalante to be pushed out of his position, and the program that he built collapsed in his absence. The opportunity to see the extraordinary in his former school is now gone (So is Escalante, incidentally, who died in March of cancer, the medical bills that he could not afford paid by funds raised by his former students and Edward James Olmos, who played him in the film).

Vaccines, autism, and your newborn

Researchers at the University of Louisiana have done a comprehensive study of the neurological effects of infant vaccination. Here's a summary of their findings, published in the journal Pediatrics.

The upside of infant vaccinations: You can help your child avoid getting diseases that can lead to extreme bodily harm, up to and including death.

The downside of infant vaccinations: THERE IS NO DOWNSIDE!

Punchline: Listen to your doctor, not Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, and the guy with dreads at the organic food store who's all, like, y'know, vaccines are dangerous poison and everything that doctors push because the drug companies give them money, man.

An open letter to the CMS school board

“It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”
- John Adams

To the School Board, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools:

I am the father of three students at Smith Academy of International Languages: two in the French program, one in Chinese. Next year, my wife and I will have five students there: two in French, two in Chinese, and one in Spanish. The year after next, we’ll have six there. It is a remarkable school, and it does a remarkable job fulfilling the exhortation above, made 250 years ago by John Adams, then an unknown 21-year-old.

Welcome To "The Joy of Reason"

This rather perfunctory entry serves as a welcome to "The Joy of Reason", a site where I intend to babble, ramble, debate, cajole, waste time, and (hopefully, at least once in a while) enlighten and entertain.

Its title comes from two of my fundamental beliefs: Joy is one of the chief ends of man and woman, and reason is one of the greatest faculties of our species. The two are not antithetical, but complementary, and they come from the same source: our bodies. Reason is the greatest tool that we have evolved to navigate life, and joy can be (and should be) the outcome of a rational life.

More to come.

GG