State of Education in Florida

"Educational Suicide at the Hands of Florida's Bloody Budget Axe" by v. johns

In my July 4 post, I rhetoricalcally scolded the citizens of Florida for allowing politics to rule over progress. But Florida's seeming overall lack of commitment to the economic and social betterment of its own society and its failure to execute such a commitment with education placed front and center in its ethos, has played heavily into this scheme. While it is true that the citizens of this state bare much responsibility for their floundering quality of life -- by failing to demand better standards of excellence and accountability for themselves and their children, and by allowing an overall environment of anti-intellectualism to flourish and prevail -- the state, itself, has added to this misery by failing to secure a consistently progressive and properly funded primary and secondary school system... One with more logical and apparent attachments to a wider variety of industrial choices.

This state, along with its national and global co-conspirators, has not only nearly evaporated and destroyed its own middle class through its enabling of pricing and taxing people out of options, but has acquired a new dynamic of rich and poor that has rendered the traditionally education-centric values of the middle class nearly laughable as its citizens settle for service, labor and even professional job choices that lag tremendously behind the cost of living in this area. Jobs that should be skilled and professionalized have been reduced to mere grunt labor with menial tasks and unsafe working environments. Industries and infrastructure that should be prime in their support of artisans and craftsmen alike have floundered in their development. Prompting many to go elsewhere to chase their dreams.

While Florida loves to tout its blue skies and bountiful beaches, the sun we soak ourselves in, down here, masks a great deal of misery for those of us who see beyond all the glitter and shine. Generation after generation, our children grow up not understanding the full value and strength of a well-educated populace in an ever-changing world. Here in South Florida, we find ourselves, in what should be an intellectual wonderland with full industrial support, surrounded by the cold reality that the state's intellectual core, its school systems, lack the independence, power and prestige needed to produce a more nationally and globally competitive educational-industrial complex. One that embraces full affirmative access to education, training, re-training and placement in all leadership, service, trade and professional roles. As a result, a certain anti-intellectualism has set in across the state in recent years. A certain anti-intellectualism that will cost us all in the coming years if we are not careful.

Florida's weak educational-industrial complex has suffered tremendously under the cold axe of political games and schemes. Lacking the full throttle needed to produce a stable of home-grown talent, the state's education system outsources it's brainpower, not in the name of rich diversity of thought, but in the name of intellectual laziness on the part of its legislative parent. Our municipal and private sector entities follow the same pattern. As a result, many of Florida and South Florida's rewards, perks and opportunities have been enjoyed to a much fuller degree by wealthy and well-educated transplants from more progressive areas to the north than has been enjoyed by our own native residents.

In the meantime, as an indirect result of education not being front and center and commanding the reverence and respect that it should in the state of Florida, sometimes our talent leaves the area and often our cities and towns are not taken as seriously as other national metros, such as Atlanta -- which is seen as a very business-friendly business mecca with an airport (Hartsfield - Jackson) that rivals O'Hare in Chicago. Florida, with its cheap antics, either nets the people other states don't want or sends to them the talent that they do want. While other places attract business, medical, artistic and scientific talent, Florida, just to make a quick buck off tourism so we appear to have the nation's smoothest economy, pushes harder for sunbathers and golfers. Not that there's anything wrong with sunbathers and golfers, but why not push for permanent catalystic talent to reside here who just happen to like to sunbathe and golf? Why not say: "Look at our powerful schools and industries... Oh, by the way, we've got the best beaches and golf in the world, too."

Even though our state is in dire need of an educational revolution, there are indeed many bright spots in Florida. The further north you go in the state, the more likely you are to find them. I haven't looked at the stats yet, but generally, Tallahassee and Gainesville fare much better in that department than we do, here in South Florida. Give Orlando, home of the famed I-4 tech corridor, much credit, as well. Coincidentally, these are also areas that "look like the rest of the country." Places that don't don't have, or at least don't overdo it, on the "tropical environment" theme. And while these areas are generally college towns with room to grow, overbuilt South Florida, apparently all out of ideas, bills itself as the leisure capital of the world. Still, on a city by city, county by county basis, however, there are some bright spots in the region. But, once again, the further north you go, namely on the Treasure Coast, the better the educational scene gets for children with generally safer and less crowded schools. Martin County shines in this area. For higher education, its hard to beat Indian River State College with its ties to the University of Florida and Florida Atlantic University. But the overall feeling that education, not leisure, is our future and our forte, is lacking. I find this not only unsatisfactory but very troubling as well.

With everything going on in the world in an in the nation - the high fuel costs, the foreclosures, the credit crunch, the layoffs, the wars, the mortgage crisis, the stock market plunge, the rapid decaying of the world's greatest economy - you would think that the State of Florida would finally let go of its fixation of perfecting the lowly art of mediocrity. Instead, Florida chooses to be even more sub par than it already is. Its not enough to be one of the most poorly-rated states in the country on any given category. The state's partisan government, with its jerry-rigging, last-minute patch-up mentality has decided to further embarrass our state by throwing our education system to the dogs under the guise of fiscal responsibility.

So it seems, these days, our people -- and the leaders who allegedly lead us -- are apparently lacking in the type of character and resolve needed to form a region of excellence and distinction. And as we continue to digress downward, educationally, from where we were under former governor Bob Graham's leadership, decades ago, we not only find ourselves at the bottom of the barrel in school funding and high-school graduation rates, we also must witness the academic suicide of this state in the form of a 200 million dollar slashing of the budgets of its public universities, colleges and schools. Our state's unflinching willingness to cut so deeply into the futures of our children, our youth and our families underscores a lack critical thinking among the leaders we depend on to keep us up and running as a state.