Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Arkansas newspapers:
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Sept. 30, 2019.
Last week, the paper reported that community colleges in Arkansas are gaining students, but the state’s four-year universities are seeing drops in enrollment. Emily Walkenhorst’s story in Friday’s paper also explained something called the coming Cliffpocalypse.
That’s when the nation’s lower birthrate finally catches up to what should be the college years, and the kids who ain’t there don’t show up to their college courses. That’s expected to happen in about six more years, and colleges will likely see more challenges in their budgets at that time.
We imagine you can file this under These Things Happen, and note that any increases in the birthrate over the years will give universities a bottom-line boost a couple of decades after that.
But there may be a bigger challenge than figuring out budgets 18 years after a decline in the birthrate: It may be that too many of us, at least too many of the state’s leaders, keep thinking of college as a job training plan. It should be more.
Over the last several years, educational and political leaders in Arkansas have encouraged more young people to get degrees. So far, so outstanding. But their reason always seem to be economic. That is, jobs will supposedly flow once all these 20-somethings have B.A.s and B.S.s.
Some of us remember not only a different era but maybe a different culture, in which young people went to university to become educated. How passé. Nowadays, a college degree might mean nothing more to a young person, and his potential employer, than job training.
Today young people coming out of college with business degrees can be expected to debate Keynesian economics with the best/worst of them. (Economics, sometimes called the dismal science, seems to grow ever more dismal, but maybe without becoming a science.)
New engineers will be up-to-date on the latest computer programs - or at least the computer programs that were the latest an hour ago. Ditto for journalists. Who needs basic English when we’ve got spellcheck?
But do you think all these new graduates have been taught to think? Or at least make a stab at it?
And a degree should take effort. A lot of effort. And not just the effort to get to class by 9 a.m. without being triggered by an offensive statue. Getting a degree should be an achievement, even today. Something to be proud of. Something gained.
Apparently community colleges are getting a boost in enrollment these days from high schoolers who are taking courses to get ahead. That’s the best news we’ve heard in a while. Get ’em while they’re young! Just as we hooked the kids on reading with Dr. Seuss. So give high school kids some Voltaire and Fitzgerald in the afternoons, and watch them take off, too.
But let’s do it for education’s sake. A degree is more than a labor-saving device. It can be so much more.
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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Oct. 1, 2019.
It wasn’t that long ago: Those pushing “medical” marijuana - and we mean pushing - were telling folks that they just wanted to help sick people. Give them medicine. Make them feel better. Take away the pain.
And how could anybody be against such a thing? Especially in Arkansas, this maybe too Natural State, in which people are polite and mostly tender-hearted when it comes to things such as illnesses.
One honest bloke made the papers all those years ago when he told reporters that medical marijuana was just the first step in this process. And the legalization of recreational dope would certainly be next. But he must’ve been hushed. After that slip, we didn’t hear much more of that talk during the medical marijuana campaign. (It’s not helpful to be too honest in these things.)
But here we are. That is, here Arkansas is. Medical marijuana is on the books, and now the next step is ready to be taken. And just might be, depending on how willing We the People of Arkansas are to believe the next line.
A group of civic-minded individuals, including the governor, made the news last week when they helped kick off a campaign against legalized pot. Or at least a campaign against signing petitions to put it on the ballot in this state.
Those who’d like to expand the use of marijuana in these latitudes are taking the next step, as we knew they would, and might soon be asking for your name at a street corner near you. Talk about a budding business. First, medical marijuana. Then recreational pot. Then expungement of all dope-related crimes. This isn’t far-fetched. This is now.
“Ten or 15 years ago, ballot measures by petition were earned by the hard sweat of our citizens,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson told the crowd Thursday. “Now, well-funded groups can hire canvassers to do the work.”
If you’re in any kind of crowded place these days, you might run into one of these canvassers. We ran into one—we forget the issue he was pushing—in front of the Little Rock Zoo not long ago. The best thing is to just smile and say “no, thank you” to those holding the clipboards.
Last week, some pro-marijuana type was quoted in the paper saying she’d rather have somebody driving next to her who’d had a little dope, as compared to a pint of whiskey. We’d consider that a classic example of a false choice. We’d rather the driver wasn’t impaired on anything.
It’s enough, more than enough, that we can’t go to a concert without smelling the stuff. It’s enough, more than enough, that our kids are being told today’s high-potent grass is a medicine. Now we’re being told it’s just like alcohol, only safer. And should be sold next to beer at the store.
That’s always been the objective. Those pushing legal dope always knew that. And sometimes even said it.
All the “incremental” steps have just been smoke and mirrors. With a lot more smoke than mirrors.
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