My Ongoing Job Search

So it turns out that I've completed 19 courses, grad and undergrad, in English alone with a GPA between them of 3.77.  And I've been looking for a job teaching high school for three years.  Yay, America! Read more!

For Hearts of Hope: Why Volunteering Matters

I volunteer on the crisis line with my local sexual assault response center, Hearts of Hope.  As one of the only male volunteers, I was asked by their coordinator to write a short article about why I chose to do it and my experiences thus far.  This is what I wrote.  If you are interested in helping out, whether you're male or female, contact the center in your area (I'm sure there is one).  It's incredibly rewarding.  Thanks.

For any new advocate, the first shift on the crisis line is nerve-wracking.  For me, it was probably a little more so, being one of the only male volunteers working the line.  I was terrified that I would be unable to help, that the person on the line wouldn’t want to deal with me, because I was a man.  But, when it comes to it, most people, when they call the line, are looking for help from anywhere they can get it and saying that I couldn’t be that because I was a guy was just a lame excuse not to step up and do what needed to be done.  I should know, as it was mine for a few months before I volunteered.

So I did and it’s been incredibly rewarding.  As a male volunteer, regulations prevent me from being an escort, but working the line is just as vital to the process.  Most men know someone who’s been the victim of assault and, because we’re told by society we’re meant to be the protectors, many of us end up feeling frustrated and angry with no outlet.  While that helplessness is terrible, the energy can be channeled into something positive.  Volunteer.  Increase awareness.  Take a stand against sexual assault and do what you can to help the victims.  Very rarely have the words, “Man up,” been so fitting.

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New Skill #16 - Woodburning

This weekend, I procured my first woodburning pen and some wood.  I can't possibly see this ending badly. Read more!

A Thought: On Mimes

Because someone once thought, "You know what?  Clowns aren't terrifying enough.  Let's make them completely silent, too." Read more!

Avery Island: Part Two

And these are the nature photos.  Jennifer took the ones of the bird, the fallen tree and the cypress, which I particularly liked and, therefore, stole.  Yay, art!

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Avery Island: Part One

I took these on our trip to Avery Island.  Looking over them, I decided to break them into two groups.  These are the ones I took of Jennifer.  Enjoy.

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Building a Mystery...Story

For the last few days, I've been rolling over in my head some ideas for writing a set of mystery/thriller stories.  They're based on a character I created a while back, fleshed out some, but never really got a hold on.  I've since tweaked him a bit and think he's about ready to take the stage. 

I've read more than a few detective stories in my life, as it's one of my favorite genres, so I've seen a lot of what makes them good and a LOT of what makes them bad.  The best of them seem to have built solid, realistic characters then placed them into a story, as opposed to the other way around, so that's what I'm doing.  I'm building a world in which my story will take place, filling it with people and seeing what happens.  I'm looking forward to it. Read more!

A Strange Thing Happened on the Way to Avery Island...

We set out yesterday morning to go to Avery Island (I took some great pictures that I should be able to post in a few days).  Upon leaving the apartment and passing through the neighborhood, we see, walking down the road, a goat.  Yes, a goat.  With a collar.  Just there.  It was incredibly surreal. Read more!

A Thought: On Pregnancy Questions

Were I a pregnant woman, every time someone came up and asked if I knew what it was yet, I would just cross my fingers, hunch my shoulders and say, hopefully, "Human!" Read more!

Ways to Make a Better World: Don't Generalize

Many years ago, I was accompanying a friend to pick up her little girl, about two at the time, at daycare.  When she and her mom came around the corner, she saw me and exclaimed in an excited voice, "Daddy!" then ran and threw herself into my arms.  This was incredibly awkward for the women standing behind the counter of the lobby who actually knew her daddy, which just made it funnier for her mom and I. 

Because I was a male figure in her life that played with her and helped to care for her, I was a daddy.  See, at that age, kids tend to make broad generalizations, not bothering to discern the difference between things and just lump them all under the same label.  Then they get older and start to understand the concepts of individual identity.  The problem is that people sometimes seem to regress as they get older and their lives become more complex.

While it isn't a terrible thing all the time, it can lead to some real problems if it becomes the norm.  It leads us to form opinions about people and situations based on past experiences.  If it's something like having gotten food poisoning at a particular restaurant, that's not such a bad thing, but if it's not trying a new restaurant because you had a bad experience at a similarly-themed one, that's another.  At best, it keeps us from experiencing new people and things, which has been shown to stave off the mental effects of aging.  At worst, it can lead to things like bigotry and stagnation.

So branch out.  Approach each new person and experience as it is, rather than limiting yourself and your possible enjoyment with preconceived notions.  Life is about living and there's no sense in limiting your options with self-imposed barriers. Read more!

A Thought: On Why We Write

I sometimes think that writers write about the world we wish could be, to try and shape the world into the place we wish it were, or the place with believe it to be.  Read more!

Praxis: The Aftermath

So I took the Praxis yesterday for secondary social studies.  It's purportedly the most difficult to pass, with most people taking it more than once and even then only passing by a few points.  I knew this going in and had a fair idea as to why, which proved to be accurate.

The problem with the test isn't so much that it's too much test in too little time, though that is an issue.  It's not the easiest thing in the world to complete 90 multiple choice questions and three constructed response essays in two hours, but it's doable, if you budget your time well.  As a writer, it grated on me that my essays weren't up to the quality of which I know I'm capable, but they got the points across and that was what was needed.

The thing that makes this Praxis so difficult is the fact that it covers, ranging from very broadly to minutely specifically, world history, American history, all of the social sciences, anthropology, theology, economics and American civics.  In one test.  It makes the test very nearly impossible to study for, as the coverage area is so vast and the percentage devoted to each discipline completely random. 

For instance, I spent the last month splitting my time between brushing up on the social sciences and economics, which would, according to the ETS breakdown, be roughly 30% of the test.  In actuality?  There were two on the social sciences and four on economics.  Out of 90.  The vast majority of the test, including all three constructed response essays, dealt with history. 

Now, I think I passed.  There were only two questions at which I had to just plain guess.  But this is ridiculous.  The concept as a whole of paying nearly a hundred dollars to take what amounts to a shot in the dark when, in the classroom, you'll be using books and resources that will always be present to plan lessons.  Were the test only constructed response, which tests both general knowledge of history AND the ability to interpret and relay the causal relationships between the various aspects, it would be valid.  But the crapshoot that is the multiple choice section (and 75% of the score) is a waste of time and money.  But hey, when you have to pay $90 to retest each time, ETS doesn't have a lot of incentive to change things, do they? Read more!

Off to take the Praxis...again

In a couple of hours, I'll be sitting for another Praxis exam (one of the ways that a number of states use to test teachers for certification).  I'll have two hours to complete 90 multiple choice and three constructed-response essays covering all of world and American history, the social sciences, economics and civics.  Yeah, I'm sure I've got this. Read more!

So out of touch...

When are writers for T.V. and movies going to realize that video games ceased having numbered levels in the 90s?  And it isn't just antisocial nerdy losers who play them. Read more!

Five Years

I wrote this when I was 23.  I come across it now and then and think that I should update it, clean it up, as I'm a better writer now than I was then.  I never do, though.  I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.

Five Years

by

Zachariah Hebert

            When I was three, my world consisted of my grandparent’s home and the little fenced in yard surrounding it.  Back then, it was the smells of pancakes and floor polish that reminded me that I was home.  I saw my mom on the weekends sometimes, because she was in school and there was nothing in Franklin for her then, except me.  I had a bear named Cookie that watched over me while I slept, and, truth be told, still sits in a place of reverence on my bookshelf headboard to this day.  Some things you just can’t let go of.

            By age eight, I was living in Lafayette, a bigger city, though my own scope hadn’t expanded much.  I’d met Ian, then, and our afternoons, when he could sneak out, were spent tearing through the woods that, back then, ran along the entire stretch of road behind our houses.  In those woods, there were secrets and hidden stories and places to lose ourselves.  There were also places to hide from real life, where abusive mothers and worries of whether there would be food next week could be left behind.  Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep, I would sneak out the window and go and lie beneath the boughs of a massive pine tree, near the center of the forest, and, warm on the bed of pine needles beneath a blanket we’d left out there, fall asleep under the stars, because there was something comforting about being in the presence of something so much bigger than I was.

      At thirteen, my world was a little larger, though not as much so as I’d have liked.  I spent the time when I wasn’t sleeping, as I so often wasn’t, walking the streets or, God help me, in the mall.  In those days, you could still smoke in the café at the center, not that I did, and the waterfall still ran most nights.  Ian and I would sit and play Magic and visit with the various miscreants and outcasts that happened across our paths.  We’d play hide and seek in the underground tunnels that ran behind and below the stores, which we knew better than the constantly shifting security force.  We’d have water gun fights with guns we’d bought for a dollar, back when there was a dollar store (I think they sell overpriced watches now, where it used to be).  We’d gorge ourselves on candy we’d stolen, because we were too poor to pay ten dollars for snowcaps.  It wasn’t right, but, back then, that only made it all the sweeter.  He met his first real girlfriend there, and so did I.

      Cafes and all-night diners were my havens at eighteen.  Ian and I didn’t see each other as much anymore as we’d have liked.  We both had other friends who we spent more of our time with.  Mine were named things like Kerouac, Yeats, and Gaiman, his went by Jack, Boone, and Jose.  We’d both surrounded ourselves with dime store philosophers, artists, and musicians, and fooled ourselves into thinking we were our own special brand of different. 

      Those were nights when we felt like we would live forever.  Everyone has nights like that, when you’re eighteen and there is nothing but you and the road and the music that spoke to you then in a way that it never would again, no matter how hard you tried to hold on to it.  It’s part of what makes us who we are.  In those moments, short, sweet, and, inevitably, underappreciated, we found within ourselves the truest evidence of divinity I ever have.  The world was open, boundless, and full of a quiet expectation that possessed the possibility for nothing and everything just beneath the surface.  We, right then, were immortal.

      By twenty-three, strangers were living in the house where I’d grown up, my grandparents having passed away a few years back.  They tore the woods down, little by little, to build low rent housing, starting when I was sixteen and finishing up the last piece on my twentieth birthday.  For a while, I used to go and sit under the giant old pine tree, now in the middle of an independent living hostel for the elderly and infirmed, until they asked me not to come by anymore, because some of the residents were complaining that I was trespassing. 

The city, too, had changed.  The mall had since been overtaken by Gap-clones and, inevitably, because of the entire elitist premise upon which the Gap and places like it were built, the “we’re-better-than-the-Gap” clones, and we were never welcome in either.  The diners and cafes were all car dealerships and pizza places.  I spent a lot of time at his grave then, because, like the pine tree, it still felt like home somewhere inside of me, and it helped to know that there was, maybe, still something bigger.

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The Memory of Music

There is a time in your life when music opens the world to you.  It moves you in a way that speaks directly to the soul, whispering of your longing and love and even loss with a passion and piercing clarity that, no matter how hard you try, will fade with the years, traded in for the haunting nostalgia that brings a wistful smile to the faces of adults who, when the right song flows through the air, remember those things as though looking at a photograph faded with age. Read more!

Thinking of winter...

Taken: New Jersey, 2002 Read more!

The Music in My Head

"In between the moon and you, the angels get a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right..."

I woke up this morning with that song playing in my mind.  I should say, there's always a song playing in the background of my mind, even in my dreams.  I don't know what it's like to exist without it.  It doesn't always reflect my mood,, which has caused some strange and awkward moments in the past, when I've been humming without realizing it.  It often does, though, even when I don't quite realize it, so I've learned to pay attention, like learning to listen to that whispered voice of intuition trying to communicate what's going on in my head, or heart, in the only way it can.  Which isn't to say that I'm reading into this one, but just explaining the whole thing in general. 

I used to have what I would call Counting Crows days.  They were days where I was more introspective, quieter and more solemn, but not sad or anything.  Just reflective.  Maybe this is one of those days.  It's tough to know, this early.  I do know that I need to keep studying, which I'm going to head off to do.  But I felt the need, for whatever reason, to put this down on the proverbial page. Read more!

Lost and Found: A Play in One Act

Years ago, when I wrote Voices, I spent a fair bit of time sitting back, watching the conversations in my mind, playing the scenes out as though they were movies.  Some of them weren't terribly clear, but others, like Lost and Found lent themselves very well to the exercise.  Since one of my goals this year was to write a one act, I decided to try translating it into a script.  This is my first attempt at this sort of thing, so be gentle, and feel free to contact me about auditions.  ::Grins::

Lost and Found

by

Zach Hebert

CHARACTERS

PAUL                         A tall, broad man in his early 30s.  He wears a jacket and his clothes identify him as blue-collar.

ANDY                        Paul’s younger brother, smaller and thinner, he has an air of serenity.  He wears light, non-descript clothing.

SETTING

A recessed storefront, along a quiet urban street. 

TIME

Early in the morning, around 3 A.M.

ACT I

(PAUL is tucked inside a recessed storefront, leaning heavily against the wall for support.  The door is non-descript and worn.  It’s the middle of the night and  no one passes on the sidewalk, nor are any cars in the nearby street.  The only illumination is a single streetlight, just outside the doorway.)

PAUL

Fuck. 

(PAUL leans his head back against the wall, wincing a little.)

PAUL (cont.)

(Despondently) Fuck!

ANDY

(Offstage, calmly) You shouldn’t be so loud out here.  People are trying to sleep.

(ANDY approaches slowly from stage right, but stops just outside the glow of the light, the shadows covering his identity.  PAUL squints into the darkness, covering his eyes to block out the streetlight’s glare.)

PAUL

(Sighing) Listen, man, just keep walking, alright?  I ain’t got money and I ain’t in the mood for any shit.

(ANDY hesitates a moment, then steps into the light, grinning, and slides down the wall opposite PAUL.)

ANDY

(Still grinning) I’m just saying, mom raised you better than that.

PAUL

(Obviously relieved) Shit, Andy.  You almost gave me a heart attack.

(PAUL begins to laugh out loud, but is cut short by a pained wince.  ANDY leans forward, his grin replaced by concern.)

ANDY

You alright?

(PAUL waves him off, still chuckling a little.)

PAUL

Yeah, nah, I’m fine.

(PAUL looks up at the ceiling, laying his hands in his lap.)

PAUL (cont.)

Been awhile.

ANDY

(Grinning again) It’s not like you were calling either, you know.  You wouldn’t happen to have a smoke, would you?

PAUL

(Scoffing) Not for you.  I raised you better than that.

(PAUL reaches into his pants pocket, wincing again, and pulls out a small pouch of tobacco and rolling papers.  He begins to roll a cigarette.  ANDY rolls his eyes and laughs.)

ANDY

Fucking hypocrite.

PAUL

(In a very somber tone, without looking up) That’s me.  (BEAT)  And watch your mouth.

(They sit in silence until PAUL has sprinkled the tobacco and begins to roll up the cigarette.)

PAUL

(Resignation and a little hesitation) So this is it?

ANDY

Didn’t figure on this, huh?

(PAUL snorts and licks the cigarette, then begins to twist on the ends, still focusing on it.)

PAUL

(Shaking his head) No kidding. 

(PAUL puts the cigarette in his mouth, talking around it as he fishes a zippo out of his pocket.)

PAUL (cont.)

What the hell is this city coming to when a guy can’t even mail a fucking letter?

(PAUL chuckles and shrugs a little as he lights he cigarette.  He lingers a beat, studying ANDY’s face in the light of the zippo.  ANDY wears a serious, almost sad expression on his face.)

PAUL

(Shrugging defensively, then, with false bravado) Oh, come on, it ain’t that bad, is it?

                        (PAUL closes the zippo and shakes his head.)

ANDY

So who were you sending a letter to at two in the morning, anyhow?

(PAUL takes a deep drag before answering, exhaling and watching the smoke in the air.)

PAUL

Do we really have to talk about this right now?

(PAUL looks at ANDY, whose expression remains the same, his eyes never wavering, until PAUL continues, annoyed.)

PAUL (cont.)

Fine.  Fuck.  You can be annoying as hell, you know that?

(PAUL takes another long drag, scratching at his head, stalling and not making eye contact.)

PAUL (cont.)

(Quietly) It was Strickner’s old lady.  I didn’t…I mean, I needed to say some things.

                        (ANDY remains silent as PAUL grows more agitated.)

PAUL (cont.)

Would you say something?  We couldn’t shut you up growing up and now…

                        (PAUL takes another drag, pausing melodramatically, then grins, wide-eyed.)

PAUL (cont.)

You’re silent as the grave.

                        (PAUL laughs abruptly and ANDY’s eyes narrow.)

ANDY

You’re real cute, Paul.

PAUL

You kiddin’ me?  I’m fucking adorable.

(PAUL laughs a little more, then takes one last drag before tossing the roach into the darkness, where it can be seen glowing.  PAUL watches it and ANDY watches PAUL.)

ANDY

What’d you tell her?

                        (PAUL lifts his legs up to his chest, resting his arms on his knees.)

PAUL

I told her…I just said some shit that I needed to say.

ANDY

(Hesitantly) You weren’t mean, were you?

PAUL

Of course not! (Regains control, but still obviously agitated) What the fuck, Andy?  Why should you fucking care, after what they did to you, anyway?

ANDY

(Calmly) She didn’t do anything to me.

PAUL

Jesus, Andy!  Don’t you ever get mad?  I don’t even remember you crying when you were a baby!

ANDY

(Patiently) She didn’t do anything to me, Paulie.

PAUL

(Very softly) I know.

(PAUL looks back down at the ember still glowing, and watches as it flares, then finally dies out.)

ANDY

You wanna talk about it?

                        (PAUL throws his arms up.)

PAUL

(Exasperated and vaguely bitter)  I damn well do not want to talk about it, Andy!  I’ve spent the better part of the last couple years actively not talking about it!

(PAUL stews a minute, going back to staring at the spot where the ember had been, then grudgingly goes on.)

PAUL (cont.)

I didn’t mean it to happen.

ANDY

(Shaking his head) I don’t think that matters.

PAUL

(Through clenched teeth) I know that, Andy.  That’s why I don’t want to talk about it.

            (PAUL continues to stare at the ember as ANDY says nothing.  Eventually, PAUL takes

a deep, shaky breath and looks down at his hands, his shoulders slumped.)

PAUL (cont.)

(Shaking head) I was just so…fucking…angry.  I mean, what the fuck right did they have?

ANDY

(No accusation) What right did you have?

PAUL

No shit.  The irony, as you used to say, is not lost on me here.  Hence the letter.

ANDY

What happened, Paulie?

PAUL

I honestly don’t know.  They told me you’d been turned down for the surgery and…I thought I was gonna die, right there.  I just kept thinking…I just kept thinking how pissed mom and pop would be that I was letting you…”

                        (PAUL stopped, unable to continue.)

ANDY

You didn’t let me, Paulie.  It was just time.  I was okay with it.

PAUL

Yeah, somehow that didn’t make it better.  I wasn’t okay with it.  I just looked down at that form, saw his name, and wanted him to hurt the way I did.

ANDY

Two wrongs…

PAUL

Yeah, yeah, I know.  I was the one taught you that shit.

ANDY

It’s not shit, though.  You know that.

PAUL

I had pop’s old gun.  I wanted Strickner to explain it to me, to make my understand why he did it.

ANDY

You know what he did it.  We didn’t have insurance to cover that kind of thing.  They did what they could and…

                        (PAUL interrupts in a rage and ANDY visibly flinches.)

PAUL

No!  No, they didn’t!  They let you fucking die!

            (Pause)

I let you die…

ANDY

It wasn’t your call, Paulie.

PAUL

(Stares down at his hands intently) Yeah, but when I went out there with pop’s .38, that…that was, wasn’t it?  That was my call.

                        (PAUL looks up at ANDY, pain on his face.)

PAUL (cont.)

You disappointed in me?

ANDY

Yeah, a little.  You should’ve talked to me about it.

PAUL

You were sick.  I wasn’t going to stick that on you, Andy.  It was hard enough as it was.

                        (Both sit in silence for a beat.)

ANDY

So, the letter.  You were, what, apologizing for shooting her husband?

PAUL

It sounds stupid when you say it like that.  But sort of.  I didn’t mean for it to go down like it did.  I just found ‘em out there, walking in the park like nothing was going on, like he hadn’t just that day killed somebody’s brother, and it just…I just lost it.

                        (PAUL leans his head back on the wall, beginning to cry.)

PAUL (cont.)

I still wake up at night and hear those shots.  I just remember yelling and waving the gun, then I’m clicking the hammer on nothing and the old man is down, the lady’s screaming and…I just take off.  When I got back to the hospital, they said you were gone and I just walked out, never looked back and…

(PAUL lifts his hands in a sort of “here we are” gesture.  ANDY stands up and stares down the street, hands in his pockets.)

ANDY

Jesus, Paulie.

            (Pause)

Jesus…

                        (PAUL looks down again at the ground near his feet.)

PAUL

(Mumbling) I know.  And you want to know the really fucked up part?

(PAUL reaches into his jacket and pulls out a thick, sealed envelope, stained with blood.)

PAUL (cont.)

I didn’t even get to mail the fucking thing.

                        (PAUL stares at the envelope, then looks up at ANDY, fear plain on his face.)

PAUL (cont.)

I’m scared as hell, Andy.

(ANDY looks down at PAUL, sad but smiling a little, then holds out a hand to PAUL.)

ANDY

I know that, too, Paulie.  But what kind of world would it be if everything hinged on one thing, huh?

(PAUL hesitates, then reaches out and takes ANDY’s hand.  ANDY helps PAUL up, revealing that the wall behind him and the back of his jacket are covered in blood.  They stare at each other as a soft light appears off stage right.  As they start to walk toward it, PAUL puts his arm around ANDY and ANDY gives him an elbow in the ribs and pushes him off, both of them laughing, the routine obviously familiar, as they exit stage right.)

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What the Founding Fathers Probably Meant: Finale

Amendment Ten: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The final amendment in The Bill of Rights is by far the broadest reaching.  It states that anything not covered in The Constitution as being overseen by the federal government will be overseen by each state individually.  This was put in place for two reasons.  First, though they had banded together to fight the war for independence, the colonies had, for the most part, functioned as independent entities prior to that point, much like the countries of Europe.  Second, having just come out from under the rule of an absent and out-of-touch monarch, they sought to prevent a government with absolute power.

As Americans more than two hundred years later, and exactly a hundred years since the last state was added to the continental U.S. (Arizona, in 1912), the landscape of our country, and the world, is decidedly different now than it once was.  When the fathers put pen to paper, they had no way of knowing that The United States would one day extend across the entirety of the continent, encompassing the majority of North America. That’s a reasonable thing to have missed, given how fragile and shaky their initial status was at the time.

What’s unreasonable for them to have missed, however, is that it was only by standing together, united, that they were able to form a union at all.  It was an unfortunate oversight, caused mostly by foolish human pride and the remnants of the British hierarchical mentality, that led them to miss the fact that unity does much more good than harm. A stable, centralized government was what led to the golden age of the Roman Empire and it was only when the divisive corruption and in-fighting took hold, fostered by greed and a lust for power, that it began to fall.

Instead, they allowed their fear to take control and tried to keep the federal government as small as possible, while bolstering the size of the state government.  The problem is that they actually did a really good job of compensating for that when they created the federal government.  The system of federal checks and balances was a masterful way to both ensure that the federal government couldn’t become a dictatorship and guarantee that each state had a say in how the country was run.  The bicameral legislative branch was built in such a way as to give each state a voice in how the country was run.

The problem with the way the amendment was laid out was that it specifically said that any power not specifically delegated to the federal government was given to the states.  That meant that programs that would arise later, like the public education system, often went uncovered and led to huge gaps between states and costly, needless bureaucratic additions that ended up hurting both the states and their citizens. 

To use the education system as an example, as it’s the one with which I am most familiar and stands as one of the best when it comes to how the amendment dropped the ball, the efficacy of the American education system is spotty, at best.  The reason for this, among many others, is that the states are almost solely responsible for paying for it and overseeing it.  Let’s contrast the model as it stands and one under a unified federal statute. 

As it stands, the requirements to teach vary from state to state, with some being very high, as they should be, and others shamefully low.  As well, the quality of public schools in some states and areas is far superior to others, as they have more tax dollars to spend.  That means that a student who has the unfortunate luck to be born in a low-performing state stands a much greater chance of being a burden on the system later in life than one born in a high-performing state, thus making everyone else shoulder the burden through the welfare system.  Finally, though most states will cut education first in favor of road construction, commerce protection and things like that, which should fall under the state umbrella, that leads to lower productivity in the long run for that state as their workforce will become progressively less educated and will therefore make less money, which means they will pay less into the system, which will then cut back more, on and on in a vicious, downward spiral.

Instead, the burden of funding and overseeing the American education system should fall on the federal government, as it does in most other first-world and developing nations.  If that were the case, the department of education, a solvent, well-functioning branches of the federal government, even in these trying times, would be able to set teacher certification standards and allow national licensing, meaning that skilled teachers in one state would be able to move freely where they were needed without any unreasonable burden (as it stands now, a teacher licensed in all fifty states would have to pay close to $15,000 to have that freedom). 

It would also mean that a student from a low-income state like Louisiana or Alabama would receive the same quality of education as one from a high-income state like Texas or California.  This leveled playing field would make the work force more capable overall and thereby increase the kind of healthy competition is the basis of a capitalist economy.  It’s been shown conclusively that the better an education one receives at the K-12 level, the more productive a person is likely to be and, therefore, the less likely they are to be a drain on society.

Which leads to the final benefit, and the one which should be most appealing to the average citizen; it would, in two ways, make life better.  First, it would remove the burden from the state government, both financially and bureaucratically.  That means they could put more time and money towards fixing the things they should be taking care of.  Second, because it would make a more well-prepared workforce, the burden of the federal welfare system would decrease in a decade or two, and continue to decline, thus alleviating some of that burden.

So why don’t we do this, when all research and basic reasoning says it would lead to all these wonderful things?  The same reason the founding fathers had.  We’re afraid of indoctrination.  I suppose that was a somewhat valid fear at its inception, but it’s become incredibly outdated now.  First, if we’re being honest, the prevalence of mass media makes the argument pointless.  We’re already being indoctrinated, every minute of every day that we spend in front of an electronic device, with whatever agenda is being put forth by the things we’re watching or reading.  Second, we’re way past the point where states should be competing with one another.  Corporations extend across state lines, so, too, should their workers. 

What it all boils down to is this simple, irrefutable fact: we’re better off working together than constantly competing against one another.  Let the businesses compete, that’s a good thing on any level, but the nation should be working toward being better as a whole.  That, in essence, was the entire point of what the founding fathers were getting at in the first place with this bold new notion.  We are capable, when standing as one country, of changing the world.  We’ve done it before.  But we must let go of the old ways in order to do that now. 

The overarching message of this whole essay, I suppose, was just that.  We need to look at our past successes and our past failures in the same light.  We need to shed the mistakes, the useless bits, and continue to move forward with the courage and strength that the founding fathers, in their wisdom, allowed us to possess.  Most importantly, we must grow and change with time and innovation, letting go of things just because they have always been, much as the fathers chose to do.  It’s scary to blaze new trails, but it’s something for which we, as Americans, have shown great aptitude and which our Constitution, as a living document, was made to allow.

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