Education must be a high priority

Bill Ward

Education in our county seems to have hit a raw nerve with some. I feel that we did and do have dedicated teachers and administrators teaching our children and grandchildren. I remember Miss Ball and Miss Madden as well as Myrtle Standiford. My parents, and eventually even I, began to believe that those ladies were married to their vocation and the children of our community, and they were. We had the same general attitude then as we do now. What was good enough for Mom and Dad is fine for the kids. Dad worked at International Furniture or Park Furniture or even Rushville Furniture and so will Junior.

Where are those places of employment now? I don’t seen any of them around now. The closest we can come is The Sampler at Homer; it is a fine establishment and puts out quality material but employs few compared to the older institutions. Being an outstanding wood worker is just not all that marketable in today’s job market. We have Trane, INTAT, and Emerson Climate Control as our major employers today. They require a completely different type of ability for their employees than did the furniture factories. They require a much higher degree of education and commitment than did International.

Think of the many changes in our everyday life over the last 30 years. I do not feel I am that old, but also feel that there is so much more around to understand and work with than when I was young it is mind boggling. I didn’t have TV, computers, I Pods, cell phones, Gameboys, etc. We didn’t even have automatic shifts in our autos until I was almost ready to learn to drive myself. Rockets were something you shot off on the Fourth of July, not to the moon. Atomic energy was not heard of nor, in many minds, even thought of. We, at that time, had many youngsters who had indeed followed their parents into the workforce. They felt they would be at International just like their families. That just does not work today.

Manufacturing, what little we have left of it, does not seem to work that way anymore. Certainly there are those who have put in numerous years at the existing manufacturing plants, but I would guess many more have moved on to other things. Anything today demands much more education than was needed in my day if you want a good paying job. You have to understand and be able to use computers. You have to understand many more abstract things than in my youth. And you have a lot more to learn. Mathematics is much more important than in the past as is science and computer skills. We all have had to adapt to the way things have gone; some have done better than others.

Rushville’s attitude on education, unfortunately, seems much the same as it is for economic development: low on the totem pole. We all need to wake up and work with, not against, economic development and education. What was good enough for me is not good enough for my grandchildren. I want them to do better than I did. I want them to have a better life than I did. I want them to enjoy what they do and to be able to do it. I want more for them than I had for me.

Our world has changed so very much in my lifetime it is almost impossible to think of all that has occurred. We went to the moon, harnessed atomic power, invented the computer—and they, in turn, brought us many other goods and services. And in a sense they caused a lot of us to lose our jobs. Computers can do a lot more than humans can and do it faster. Now the humans have to understand how to run those computers, not how to smooth out a board of wood. We need education. And we, as the older generations, need to be the ones in the forefront of our education effort. We should see the handwriting on the wall, how important it is for everyone to have the opportunity to get as much education as they can. We all need to fully realize how important it is for our youth to get that education, not only for them but for Rush County too.

We cannot be complacent and allow things to drift along. We must work hard to give our youngsters a good foundation while here in our school system. We then need to work with and for our youth to get the higher education that they need. Not necessarily everyone should or would want to go to college but there are other educational opportunities for those who do not care to go to college. There is Ivy Tech, Vincennes University, and many other opportunities out there. And there are ways to get into them and pay for them if you only look.

Wake up, Rush County, we need education and we, as parents and grandparents, need to realize just how important that is to our youngsters.



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