Theme: Governance

I’m sitting near the deputy secretary of education for a local state. I happen to know his wife (his third). She stepped out for a moment, and I started conversation by asking him if he was able to chat or preferred not to. And having overheard that he just flew in, and that he was downing scotch, listened to his itinerary – which gave no clue to his occupation but whatever it was he wasn’t proud of it. Men will tell you their biz if they are.
Just then his wife returned, and I said that I was trying to pry conversation out of him. She replied that ‘He hates people’. 😉 She told me his occupation, and I started laughing and said “I’m so sorry for you.“ 😉 And he lowered his head accepting it as if it was expected. And didn’t disagree. Though admittedly he’s a bit tired. 😉
I can’t imagine having a job where you listen to the complaining of and endless stream of overconfident clueless harpies pursing self interest under cover over moral duty with emotional loading of conviction.
So I wait until they’re about to leave and “Can I ask one more question? What’s the best and worst aspect of your job?” He lit up and said that the best part of my job is the 500,000 kids I have that I love and care for.” He said the exact number, but I didn’t write it down at the time. “The hardest part is that this is adiverse state and every [locality] is very different. So I worry about giving all these kids a choice of achieving the life they want. And our biggest problem is that everyone can’t and doesn’t want to got to college (and something about how the weren’t helping them).”
Now, what I see is a good person, but one that is limited like everyone from producing excellence instead of pleasing students and parent’s fantasies. What I did hear later was the need to focus too much on their state of mind. What I didn’t get was any sense of the children developing responsibility and duty and putting in the work necessary to compete in the modern economy. An economy which he later stated, had a high cost of living vs the income of a lot of the student’s families.
Unless we are more demanding, we are not going to produce a competent generation, and we will continue our demographic decline.

Love you all.
Cheers
Curt