as a grassroots organizer I am all about
helping people discover their vision for
the future so I’d like to begin by
taking you all on a short journey to
ground us collectively around the
importance of education and i welcome
you to close your eyes if you would like
as we take this trip together imagine
that you are lying in your bed just
before it is time to wake up your alarm
goes off and you get up to start your
day go through the motions of getting
ready in your mind have some breakfast
if that is part of your routine and then
head out the door and into the world
what does a normal day look like for you
maybe you have some appointments or you
need to run some errands or you go to
work or to school and as you envision
your day think about all the people you
meet and interact with think about all
the items and products and vehicles and
buildings that you encounter and finally
consider all that you provide to the
world each day you can open your eyes
now but keep thinking about what a
normal day looks like for you and I’ll
ask you to consider first all the good
things that you just thought of and also
the good things that don’t affect you
every day how easy is it for you to move
around your world
what beauty did you see around you what
medical advances keep you and your
family healthy what products do you use
that make your life easier now ask
yourself how many of those things are
you directly involved in creative how
many of those things are you 100%
responsible for because unless you are
living in the wilderness growing your
own food sewing your own clothing and
making your own tools from scratch most
of what you see and have is work done by
hundreds and thousands of other
and at this point you may want to ask me
but barb what does all this have to do
with supporting schools and providing
funding for public education well I
spend a lot of time talking to people
and listening to them and a rhetorical
question that I hear a lot is why am i
paying taxes to educate someone else’s
kids and because I know that this
question when asked people don’t
actually want to hear the list of
reasons that I could provide I usually
stay silent because I believe what
people are really voicing with that
question is their frustration a
frustration that they don’t feel
invested in they don’t feel that their
communities are being invested in and
they do not see how investing in public
education can be an investment in
ourselves and in our communities and
because of how big the world is and how
large many cities and towns are it can
be difficult to see all the
interconnections that make up Society
but let’s again consider the world
around us and all the interconnected
parts of it that affect us the food we
eat the air we breathe the water we
drink the products we use and the
vehicles we drive all of these things
are the results of decisions made by
people and whether these things are good
for us and good for our environment or
harm us and harm the environment it’s
all based on how well educated our
society is and we have to ask ourselves
are we only responsible for the
decisions of our direct offspring or do
we share a lot responsibility as a
species that lives in community with
others for the decisions made by society
I would ask that you think about how you
would answer the following three
questions first how much of what you
give to the world directly impacts your
parents compared to what you offer the
rest of the world second how would what
you have to offer the world be different
your parents had been completely
responsible for paying for or otherwise
providing your education third how much
better do you think the world would be
if our first priority was investing in
the education of everyone now I may or
may not be the only one in the room
without kids but I know that I am
directly affected by the decisions made
by other people’s kids so it’s not in my
self-interest to leave the education of
society to Champs if I want to live in
the best possible world I need to take
some responsibility for the other
decision-makers of the world after all
how can we have a functioning democracy
if we do not all understand how the
world around us works how can we make
smart decisions about the economy and
the environment
without understanding math and science
how can we make good policy decisions if
we are not grounded in our own human
history consider all of the major
problems that we have faced throughout
our existence and how we have worked to
solve them think of the issues we face
today in our communities and the need to
find solutions to them and there is no
way for us to know what we will face
individually over the course of our
lifetime what diseases we may get what
challenges we may face so it is in our
best interests to have doctors who are
looking to cure all diseases to foster
entrepreneurs who are ready to solve any
challenge a world of visionaries making
the world a cleaner safer better place
to live for all the only way we get to
this is to inspire everyone to learn and
to provide everybody with the tools and
the skills that they need I love
proverbs and metaphors and one that I
have known for as long as I can remember
and that I am betting most of you have
heard as well is this give someone a
fish and you feed them for a day teach
someone to fish and you feed them for a
lifetime
generally people have interpreted this
to mean that it is a more worthwhile
pursuit to help someone learn how to do
a task for themselves than it is to
perform that task for them over and over
again and if we take this logic a step
further we could say that if we want
people to be independent self-sufficient
and in control of their destiny then it
is better to teach people how to make
their way in the world and to empower
them to do so over simply providing
people with the things that they need to
survive that is the message that I heard
growing up and I believe that is why my
parents and grandparents so valued
education and work to instill a love of
learning into myself and my siblings and
this interpretation is why I am so drawn
to the work of grassroots organizing in
which it is my job to empower people to
imagine the world that they want to live
in and then help them make their vision
a reality what I would ask are we as a
society truly committed to teaching each
other to fish if we were we would
address the funding crisis that our
public schools face we would stop
nickel-and-diming school budgets we
would make sure that the curriculum
doesn’t just teach reading writing and
arithmetic what also teaches critical
thinking emotional resilience and what
it means to be an active and engaged
part of a community we would engage
students around the issues that we are
facing and ask them to help us solve
them and we would give students the
space to try new things without fear of
failure an environment that values real
learning collective collaboration and
personal development parents do have a
great deal of responsibility to prepare
their children to go out into the world
but we all bear responsibility to our
communities and society in general to
work together to create a well-educated
Society thank you you
helping people discover their vision for
the future so I’d like to begin by
taking you all on a short journey to
ground us collectively around the
importance of education and i welcome
you to close your eyes if you would like
as we take this trip together imagine
that you are lying in your bed just
before it is time to wake up your alarm
goes off and you get up to start your
day go through the motions of getting
ready in your mind have some breakfast
if that is part of your routine and then
head out the door and into the world
what does a normal day look like for you
maybe you have some appointments or you
need to run some errands or you go to
work or to school and as you envision
your day think about all the people you
meet and interact with think about all
the items and products and vehicles and
buildings that you encounter and finally
consider all that you provide to the
world each day you can open your eyes
now but keep thinking about what a
normal day looks like for you and I’ll
ask you to consider first all the good
things that you just thought of and also
the good things that don’t affect you
every day how easy is it for you to move
around your world
what beauty did you see around you what
medical advances keep you and your
family healthy what products do you use
that make your life easier now ask
yourself how many of those things are
you directly involved in creative how
many of those things are you 100%
responsible for because unless you are
living in the wilderness growing your
own food sewing your own clothing and
making your own tools from scratch most
of what you see and have is work done by
hundreds and thousands of other
and at this point you may want to ask me
but barb what does all this have to do
with supporting schools and providing
funding for public education well I
spend a lot of time talking to people
and listening to them and a rhetorical
question that I hear a lot is why am i
paying taxes to educate someone else’s
kids and because I know that this
question when asked people don’t
actually want to hear the list of
reasons that I could provide I usually
stay silent because I believe what
people are really voicing with that
question is their frustration a
frustration that they don’t feel
invested in they don’t feel that their
communities are being invested in and
they do not see how investing in public
education can be an investment in
ourselves and in our communities and
because of how big the world is and how
large many cities and towns are it can
be difficult to see all the
interconnections that make up Society
but let’s again consider the world
around us and all the interconnected
parts of it that affect us the food we
eat the air we breathe the water we
drink the products we use and the
vehicles we drive all of these things
are the results of decisions made by
people and whether these things are good
for us and good for our environment or
harm us and harm the environment it’s
all based on how well educated our
society is and we have to ask ourselves
are we only responsible for the
decisions of our direct offspring or do
we share a lot responsibility as a
species that lives in community with
others for the decisions made by society
I would ask that you think about how you
would answer the following three
questions first how much of what you
give to the world directly impacts your
parents compared to what you offer the
rest of the world second how would what
you have to offer the world be different
your parents had been completely
responsible for paying for or otherwise
providing your education third how much
better do you think the world would be
if our first priority was investing in
the education of everyone now I may or
may not be the only one in the room
without kids but I know that I am
directly affected by the decisions made
by other people’s kids so it’s not in my
self-interest to leave the education of
society to Champs if I want to live in
the best possible world I need to take
some responsibility for the other
decision-makers of the world after all
how can we have a functioning democracy
if we do not all understand how the
world around us works how can we make
smart decisions about the economy and
the environment
without understanding math and science
how can we make good policy decisions if
we are not grounded in our own human
history consider all of the major
problems that we have faced throughout
our existence and how we have worked to
solve them think of the issues we face
today in our communities and the need to
find solutions to them and there is no
way for us to know what we will face
individually over the course of our
lifetime what diseases we may get what
challenges we may face so it is in our
best interests to have doctors who are
looking to cure all diseases to foster
entrepreneurs who are ready to solve any
challenge a world of visionaries making
the world a cleaner safer better place
to live for all the only way we get to
this is to inspire everyone to learn and
to provide everybody with the tools and
the skills that they need I love
proverbs and metaphors and one that I
have known for as long as I can remember
and that I am betting most of you have
heard as well is this give someone a
fish and you feed them for a day teach
someone to fish and you feed them for a
lifetime
generally people have interpreted this
to mean that it is a more worthwhile
pursuit to help someone learn how to do
a task for themselves than it is to
perform that task for them over and over
again and if we take this logic a step
further we could say that if we want
people to be independent self-sufficient
and in control of their destiny then it
is better to teach people how to make
their way in the world and to empower
them to do so over simply providing
people with the things that they need to
survive that is the message that I heard
growing up and I believe that is why my
parents and grandparents so valued
education and work to instill a love of
learning into myself and my siblings and
this interpretation is why I am so drawn
to the work of grassroots organizing in
which it is my job to empower people to
imagine the world that they want to live
in and then help them make their vision
a reality what I would ask are we as a
society truly committed to teaching each
other to fish if we were we would
address the funding crisis that our
public schools face we would stop
nickel-and-diming school budgets we
would make sure that the curriculum
doesn’t just teach reading writing and
arithmetic what also teaches critical
thinking emotional resilience and what
it means to be an active and engaged
part of a community we would engage
students around the issues that we are
facing and ask them to help us solve
them and we would give students the
space to try new things without fear of
failure an environment that values real
learning collective collaboration and
personal development parents do have a
great deal of responsibility to prepare
their children to go out into the world
but we all bear responsibility to our
communities and society in general to
work together to create a well-educated
Society thank you you
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