Since a few days before midterm elections, I have been consumed by interviews with all Dallasites involved in politics. From Craig Watkins to Stephen Broden, I’ve talked to them all. And while many of these interviews were interesting and showed me the true level of dirtiness that is Dallas politics, the one interview that actually made me take a step back and think was my interview with Cal Jillson, a political science professor here at SMU.
In our first interview, he told me that the fear that Texans have of taxes and an active government will eventually cripple our state. He said that if Texans continue to reject candidates that want make big changes to government, we are eventually going to pay serious consequences.
Texans are not only against big government, they are terrified of it. Because of this, they reject changes that might even slightly raise their taxes. Rick Perry’s “I’m not going to improve education, I’m not going to make new roads unless they’re toll roads and I won’t improve access to healthcare” is preferable to any promises of improvement made by Bill White. Why? Because if we don’t improve anything, we don’t have to raise taxes.
At some point, this is going to have to change. Jillson pointed out that Texas has a rising minority population that is going to need a better education than we can currently provide. We may be fine now, but in a few years, our youth population will absolutely not be able to compete in a global job market.
Texas already sits low in nation-wide rankings of education. Our drop out rate is ever-increasing, and our teacher retention rate is getting lower. Without substantial reform, we will always be one of the least-educated states in America.
But until Texans are willing to put a governor into office that promises these changes and is capable of making them, these changes won’t be made. It is a shame that Texans are so afraid of government they squirm in their seats when someone speaks of education reform because it may mean that they need to open their pocketbooks a little wider.
Staunch advocates of small government promote things like school vouchers and the complete privatization of public schools. While these are ideas are good in theory, in reality they will never actually happen. It is time for Texans to be pragmatic and take steps that have been proven to work.
More teachers, smaller class sizes and an increase in the number of specialized charter schools are all proven measures for bettering education. But Texans haven’t done any of that on a large scale because we hate the idea that the government should be able to expand anything.
Well, here’s the deal Texas: We are heading towards disaster. We need to do something about it. Riding the Tea Party wave may be hip now, but it will eventually come back to bite us when, 10 years from now, we realize that our youth population doesn’t have a good enough education to get a well-paying job.
I am not a proponent of big government. I, like many of you, don’t want government provided healthcare or to buy my car from the federal government. I am just a proponent of being realistic. It is simply not realistic to think that we can reform education without an increase in funding. It is simply unrealistic to continue voting candidates into office that advocate a private takeover of public education, and it is further ridiculous to buy the argument that our public schools are doing just fine.
Wake up, Texas. It is selfish for us to continue to nickel and dime our education system into failure. We need to stop electing candidates that do not have any plans to decrease our drop out rate and improve our education.
We made a mistake this time around; let’s not make it again in 2014.
Jessica Huseman is a junior political science and journalism double major. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Campus. Jessica can be reached for comments or questions at [email protected].
