There is a verse in the song "Trouble in the Fields" by Nanci Griffith and Rick West that goes:
"There's a book up on a shelf about the dust bowl days
And there's a little bit of you and a little bit of me
In the photos on every page
Now our children live in the city and they rest upon our shoulders
They never want the rain to fall or the weather to get colder."
We seem to have been hearing a lot of complaining lately, especially from parents of school-age children. Apparently, not many of them agree with or even understand Gov. Sonny Perdue's decision to request a two-day closure of schools in anticipation of diesel fuel shortages related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. I can understand their frustration. Education in Georgia is critically important and should be one of our top priorities. But it involves much more than just school attendance. It also means learning about and seeking to understand the world around us.
The real world brings us storms like Katrina and Rita, wars, famine, climate change, a scarcity of resources and many more natural and unnatural events brought on by the impact of human activity on our planet. Will we all learn something from this controversy? Or will we just continue to complain? Maybe this could be a true educational moment for all Georgians.
Wouldn't it be nice if parents like Quintasha Swanson, whose comments as reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution addressed the need for farmers to put off their harvest, really looked beyond their own immediate needs and were able to learn from this situation? Are those of us who live in metro Atlanta really so far removed from our rural roots that we have forgotten that crops cannot be harvested when it is a bit more convenient? Have we forgotten where our food comes from, who grows it and how it is grown? Or did we never know in the first place?
It wasn't too long ago when the school year did not start until after the crops were in because school-age children were needed on the farm. Now, fortunately, most farmers rely more on diesel-powered farm equipment than on human labor.
As communities face challenges related to scarce resources, schools will be affected. It is only going to become more of a challenge for our already cash-strapped schools to pay for fuel. We are already experiencing teacher shortages. How are parents going to react when schools are closed because of a flu pandemic? These issues are very real. Have we learned anything? How loudly will we complain then?
The next time we complain about the rain, the cold, the price of fuel and a disruption in our planned activities, I hope we will remember to look beyond the symptoms to the root causes. If we start talking about what we can do about it, then we will know we truly have become more educated.
