State Representative Barbara Notestein, et al
Wisconsin Assembly
State Capitol Office 126-W
Madison, WI 53702

Re:  Parental Choice, AB-601; some ideas and suggestions relevant
       thereto and request for immediate, positive action thereon

Dear Barbara:

This letter presents some ideas and observations intended to convince you, and the other CC: addresses not already so inclined, that we are in a crisis situation requiring immediate passage of the Parental Choice Bill, AB-6O1, sponsored by Polly Williams and numerous others.  My presentation attempts to relate events unfolding in Eastern Europe as they relate to the need for us to prevent similar types of actions from occurring within some of our own institutions having almost identical structures, orientations and constituencies.  My interpretation of those events, which represent the terminal failure of the most significant socio-political experiment in human history, are:
 

BUREAUCRACY:  Significant of most large organizations are the innumerable rules and procedures required to govern the actions of their enormous constituencies.  While these rules ensure continuity and stability, their applicability in the face of a constantly changing world becomes geometrically more difficult the greater the number of people required to reach a consensus regarding their revision.

In addition, as evidenced in Eastern Europe, when there are no alternative organizations constantly experimenting, adapting and showing the way toward more effective action, the bureaucracy lacks role models which would precipitate change in an orderly, consistent fashion.  (The fact that East European decision makers controlled, thereby guaranteeing their own perquisites predisposed their natural, human aversion to change.  Had more risk been involved, they would more likely have 'managed' to adapt their organizations to an ever changing reality while maintaining their relative, desirable stability.  As it is, they're left no choice but to start over from scratch.  Many of our own larger public and private organizations face this same reality.)
 

CHOICES:  Allowing people no alternatives guarantees that problems will eventually grow beyond control.  That's simply because policies follow the path of least resistance - usually meaning no significant change.  They become more dysfunctional as the rest of the environment evolves toward a differing reality.  Allowing freedom of choice ensures that producers of products or services, as opposed to consumers, will suffer the consequences of failure to adapt, thereby encouraging adaptation rather than stagnation.
 

FREEDOM:  The multiplicity of alternatives is what drives our free enterprise system.  The ease with which alternative suppliers of services or products can enter the marketplace to satisfy continually changing consumer preferences ensures progress, rather than stagnation in a changing environment.
 

PEOPLE POWER:  People will constrain their own power only so long as they perceive themselves to be confronted by overwhelming force.  Outrageous conditions foisted upon people by misguided leaders may increase their motivation to the point where they feel they are more powerful than ANY opposing force.  (While the former, thanks to the removed threat of intervention by Russian troops, is now being evidenced in Eastern Europe, the latter has mostly been evidenced in the French, American, numerous Chinese and other revolutions.)
 

PROFIT MOTIVE:  Contrary to what many people think, most small business owners value independence over vast wealth.  It's the need to increase revenues to match ever rising costs that really motivates us to make profits.  And, unlike the socialism now failing miserably in Eastern Europe, so long as neither profits nor costs are completely subsidized, suppliers of goods and services will have to continually come up with new ways to adapt in order to stay in business.
 

PROBLEM SOLVING:  The combination of CHOICES, FREEDOM and PROFIT MOTIVE ensures that problem solvers will develop faster than problems, thereby creating a self-regulating, homeostatic free enterprise system obviating the necessity for PEOPLE POWER.  It seems logical and desirable to include as many of these factors as we can in our unavoidably NECESSARY BUREAUCRACIES, so that they too can help ration, rather than monopolize resources in a constantly changing environment.

We in Wisconsin have the opportunity to do just that with the Parental Choice Bill.  We can make it a role model showing others how to encourage bureaucratic adaptation by incorporating into our laws, rather than disregarding, the competitive, open market, self-regulating aspects of free enterprise capitalism.  While we don't want to throw open the entire educational system to free market competition, we can encourage alternatives which increase parental choice, the exercise of which then also gives us feedback regarding the progress of adaptation within our school systems.  The following point out the significant, immediate advantages of creating educational alternatives and choices where none now REALLY exist:
 

EFFICIENCY:  Smaller educational alternatives unencumbered by size, organizational culture and time-honored procedures would be excellent 'public fishbowls' in which to test and/or refine new techniques tackling our most intractable ongoing problems.  Also rewarding some teachers, administrators and other school system personnel sabbatical years, without suffering loss of pay or other time based emoluments, in these ENTIRELY INDEPENDENT alternative schools would be a good way to recharge their mental and motivational batteries.  It goes without saying that neither existing management nor unions should have any authority over these alternative schools or their 'independence' will become meaningless and worthless.
 

IMMEDIATELY ENHANCED PARENTAL & COMMUNITY SKILLS:  Requiring participating parents to 'buy into' these alternatives with volunteer time equivalent to the voucher subsidy obtained would lower their operating costs, enhance parental skills and improve role modeling opportunities within neighborhoods.  The dysfunctional children with whom I've become acquainted over the past couple years mostly need the one on one attention normally provided by a parent.  That gets them to the point of BECOMING EDUCABLE by more competent professionals.

We are wasting our precious resources requiring educators to do the jobs of parents.  On the other hand, we are also evidencing our naivete expecting parents whose children are most in need of educational alternatives to express parental responsibilities about which they either:

1. are contravened, by teachers forced to ignore too many children requiring the 'one on one' attention that limited time makes impossible to provide;

2. are ignorant, due to the inadequacy of their own childhood;

3. don't care, because of the misery-driven anomie or hopelessness of their own existence; or

4. are powerless, because all their time is spent keeping themselves and their children clothed, fed and sheltered.

It's time for all us adults to come together to take action which will benefit 'our' children and 'our' collective futures.  Let's set aside managerial, union, social, political and other alienating differences and solve this immediate problem before we become buried, like Eastern Europe in our own misdirection.

Respectfully and Happy Holidays to all,

Ruben J. Ciriacks, MBA, fellow concerned citizen, born again Milwaukean, community volunteer and June 1960 Washington High School dropout.  (I've been where many of today's children are!)

ENCL:  BLACK and HIGHKIDS idea paper

CC:  WI State Representatives Marcia Coggs, Tom Loftus, Gwen Moore and Polly Williams

WI State Senators Tom Barrett, Brian Burke and Gary George

Governor Tommy Thompson

MPS Superintendent Robert Peterkin

Mayor John Norquist

Senator Herb Kohl and Congressman Jim Moody
(By copy of this letter to you, I'm asking this rhetorical question:

Surely, when the federal government can find money to fund stealth bombers, the intended use of which is to precipitate the eventual destruction of all life on earth, and can support career academies able to generate dropouts faster than their signatures can dry on the 'federally guaranteed' tuition loan forms, it can also find ways to help some little children crying desperately for help from a world over which they have no control and into which they did not ask to be brought!?)

DD:  12/30/89 LETTERS ab601/mps FO=P 10:07:15

 
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Website link/location/URL: http://Ruben.Ciriacks.com/89d20cho.htm