Over at the Gazette, there’s a story about that city’s latest public school program: enticing fee-paying foreign students to study in the Janesville public schools. Not content with attracting Chinese students, Superintendent Karen Schulte traveled to see if she could learn a few multicultural insights in Abu Dhabi.
Yes, that’s the one-and-only Abu Dhabi, of the United Arab Emirates.
(See, subscription required, Janesville School District exploring more partnerships abroad.)
There’s so much talk about how Schulte used mostly non-taxpayer funds, and traveled on her vacation time. I’m sure that’s true, but it’s still a profoundly misguided effort.
Problems abound:
1. The Program. Almost every element of the program to bring foreign students (Chinese students in particular) to Janesville has been touted much and first, but considered little and afterward. (See, Janesville Schools’ Reckless Plan.)
2. Undistinguished. Honest to goodness, there’s no ready evidence that Superintendent Schulte is notably distinguished in thinking or composition. Under those circumstances, it’s far better for her to stick to the basics.
3. Misunderstanding Waste. When Janesville’s superintendent insists that her trip was funded (principally) with private funds, on her own time, she misses the point of the true cost of her trip – it’s not merely what was spent, but all those things she might have done instead.
Rather than travel about a hereditary Arab monarchy, looking at the ruling family’s petrodollar kingdom, she might have thought at least a little about practical projects for Janesville’s academic improvement.
If she wanted to see something lovely from that part of the world, she could have waited for my 4.22.14 post, Film: Welcome to Doha for three minutes, fifty seconds of video of Doha, Qatar.
Note to Superintendent Schulte: You’re welcome.
4. Worried Witless. How desperately scared for the future are Janesville’s residents that at least a few of them entertain these asinine projects?
It’s a diluted concoction of vile elements, when the community deserves a healthful, tried-and-true medicine.
An American community deserves better than a contemporary equivalent of dark, dank, nineteenth-century English hucksterism.
5. Bad Examples. Other communities would emulate this approach only at risk, most especially to any foreign students not supported and nurtured properly.
These are not shipments of consumer electronics and plastic toys – bringing large numbers into our area for extended periods deserves more care than a flitting bureaucrat’s yet shown. This is no established, laudable foreign-exchange program – it’s a flimsily constructed project with minor children as a commodity.
Americans do and should welcome exchanges with friendly peoples from around the globe, in education, science, art, and free trade. Those positive encounters are far removed from a cobbled-together program.
The only example this sets for our community is a bad one: to look at this, and make sure we don’t do the same.
Janesville may be bigger than Whitewater, but in politics, in understanding of a sound political economy, and in education, that city’s leading figures are increasingly confused or wrong.