Letter: Lesson to be learned with start time changes

Posted 3/4/16

To the editor:

A speaker at a recent School Committee meeting asked, “If we go ahead and implement school start time change this year, what will we be teaching our children?” As a father and professional educator, the question stuck …

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Letter: Lesson to be learned with start time changes

Posted

To the editor:

A speaker at a recent School Committee meeting asked, “If we go ahead and implement school start time change this year, what will we be teaching our children?” As a father and professional educator, the question stuck with me. If we seize the teaching moment, we just might teach our children something vital about democracy, on both a local and a national level.

To start, we could teach our kids that we live in a representative democracy. We literally elect people to stand in for us; to plan methodically, to explore issues deeply, and to use their best collective judgment on our behalf — and only after they lay bare their intent and philosophies when asking for our vote.

You can wrap up this lesson in just four clicks. First, take them to the five School Committee candidates’ statements on start times in the 3 October 2012 Barrington Times. Then take them to the State Board of Elections for the returns. Of the five candidates, the two boldly supporting start time change won; the two stating their opposition lost. Then, go one click further for the candidates’ statements from the 15 December 2015 special election. At this point you could discuss how this occurred in the midst of a vigorous debate which had already generated a 9:05 and an 8:05 option, and click further to mull over the official returns, noting both the winning percentage and the total number who could have voted. Toggling between these two pages, you might find it worthwhile to discuss the winning candidate’s statement:

“The district has been exploring and researching and talking about this issue since 2011. While this process has been valuable…it is now time to make a decision and move forward. There is clear evidence that later school start times benefit students physically, mentally, and academically.”

From here you could discuss the complicated process of change, but also how our small town version of representative democracy has a decent mechanism for balancing broad participation by citizens (letter writing, speaking at meetings, sharing opinions in the paper) with a fair rule set (elections, open meeting laws, rigorously followed agendas, etc.).

All of this could explain how we struck a well-considered yet forward-leaning balance with the 8:30 start; why it’s reasonable for elected representatives to hold true to their pledges during their term of office; and how opinion on any major public policy issue will always be divided. You could teach them that being part of a well-functioning democracy means learning to agree to disagree, to accept a fair outcome, and to move on in search of common ground on the next issue.

Finally, you could pivot and look outside our town. You could discuss how free speech is a fundamental right, but what we do with it is up to us. You could help them make sense of the whirl of polarizing primary politics; explain there are no rules to prevent opponents from refusing to look for middle ground, from arguing with fear, from assuming the worst, and from desperately balking a resolution for hopes that procrastination will work.  You could teach them that for democracy to function well, it requires people to show restraint as well as passion, conviction as well as open-mindedness, and to seize the common good in a public issue once they have been outvoted. You could do all of this just in time for the presidential elections next fall because those elections will have consequences too, and here or nationally, we will ultimately inherit the civics we model for our kids.

Scott Douglas

Barrington

4 Clicks:

(http://www.eastbayri.com/news/government-politics/barrington-school-committee-candidates-weigh-in-on-school-start-times/)

(http://www.ri.gov/election/results/2012/general_election/races/220.html)

(http://www.eastbayri.com/news/election-day-in-barrington-two-running-for-school-committee/)

(http://www.barrington.ri.gov/documents/clerk/Election%20Results%20-%2012-15-15.pdf)

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