- Cape Rolling Out Bloomfield Road Art Trail (8/21/19)1
- Donors Pledge Almost Two Grand To Replace SEMO's Possibly Sentient ‘Gum Tree' (8/16/18)
- SEMO and The Will To (Become A Consultant) – Part 2 (6/14/18)
- SEMO and The Will To Do (You Really Want To See That Legal Notice?) – Part 1 (6/4/18)
- Judge, Jury... Trashman (6/1/18)
- Diary of Cape Girardeau Road Deconstruction (5/11/18)
- Trying To Save A Tree From City “Improvements” (4/30/18)2
Don't like the Results Then Change the Scale
The other day I read a report that the number of poor people in 15 suburban St. Louis counties had increased by 27 percent between 2000 and 2008.
That same day, the Southeast Missourian, had an article discussing efforts to increase the graduation rate at the Cape Girardeau School District. It had a graduation rate of 72.3 percent in 2009, far less than the statewide average of 85 percent.
These are both complex problems with no easy solutions.
After all, what can you do about poor people? I suppose you can throw money literally at that problem, and that will temporarily make them not poor people.
But if you throw money at them, they'll just spend it and then they will expect you to keep throwing money at them, and we all know government funding doesn't grow on trees. It comes from the taxpayers and we have more important things to do with taxpayer money like paying for wayfinding studies and important things of that nature.
And when it comes to graduation rates, you're talking about human free will. If a kid wants to drop out of school and he or she is 16, then the kid is going to drop out of school. Are they stupid for exercising their free will? You bet they are. And they will likely continue making similar stupid decisions the rest of their lives.
Obviously, efforts are being made locally to try to find out WHY some kids choose to do this and break this cycle of stupidity, but as I said, there is no quick or easy solution.
Locally, we could possibly pay the kids to attend school as an incentive not to drop out, but that would cost a lot of money since we'd have to pay ALL kids to be fair. It's anyone's guess how much that would cost.
And when word got out that the Cape Girardeau Public School system was paying kids to stay in school, our enrollment would probably double overnight. Shoot, we might need an $80 million bond issue.
Basically, there is no cheap solution for either of these problems that most people would like to go away.
We don't want to know that the numbers of poor people are increasing or that the graduation rate at Cape Public School District is nose-diving no matter how many football stadium and auditorium bond issues are put before the voters.
That's not happy news. We like happy news. But what can we do to make that unpleasant information disappear without spending a lot of money?
Simple, just change the scale.
That's what I do whenever I don't like a measurement. For instance, if I'm feeling fat, I might go metric or if I'm feeling really fat, British. It just sounds better to say I weigh 89 kilograms or 14 stone rather than 196 pounds.
In the case of poor people, the federally defined poverty line for a family of four is currently $21,834. I think we should not say anything to the feds and have Missouri lower the poverty line to say $10,000. I bet we get rid of at least half the poor people if we just tweak the numbers a smidge. Problem solved.
And as far as Cape Girardeau Public School graduation rates, why don't we consider students to officially "graduate" when they are 15. Because they can't drop out until they are 16, our dismal "graduation" numbers will become a very successful sounding 100% in no time at all.
For the students who want to continue studying until they are 18, I feel we should create a new term to describe them.
Since their classmates who "graduated" at 15, but then foolishly chose to leave school when they turned 16 and whose job opportunities are probably limited to working the drive-thru windows at fast food establishments such as Taco Bell, perhaps we could call these students who stuck it out until they were 18 to be "Graduates Grande." I think it has a nice ring.
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