The Hoosier Spectator/A State on the Brink
Owen, Kent
THE HOOSIER SPECTATOR A STATE ON THE BRINK W hen my mother was a child, she used to complain to her brother that the family reunion at Basses' Ford had become as tiresome as all get-out, and she...
...Games are fine and dandy for amusing the multitudes, claiming bragging rights, and raising morale...
...Hoosierocentrism is not only a theory about the tendency of all persons, events, and things to be related in some way to Indiana, but also a specific condition that afflicts those persons who believe the theory...
...Even in the State Senate the lengthened school year provision was dropped, and the increased funding cut back sharply, leaving accountability as the program's salient feature...
...Since about 1965 the quality of public education throughout the state has fallen steadily, and now barely manages to attain mediocrity in all too many schools...
...Too quick, more often than not...
...For many years Indiana was second only to Massachusetts in the number of high schools that offered Latin courses, usually through Horace and Vergil...
...And it's especially apt now that we Hoosiers are so full of ourselves, what with Indiana University's NCAA basketball championship, the appeal of the movie Hoosiers, and the cussed success of A Season on the Brink for those who can't get their fill of Bob Knight...
...Lee Hamilton of Gnaw Bone exceeds the bounds of irony, for it is he who, despite the usual complaints of leftward lapses, is the Old Democracy's leading ethicist and practicing scrupler...
...How could a state that prized Edward Eggleston's Hoosier Schoolmaster as an exemplum of how the lowly could be taught and uplifted let itself down so badly...
...The ISTA is big and tough enough to bully the General Assembly into getting its own way, but ordinary Hoosiers may be able to buck up their legislators so that the principle of accountability will at long last prevail...
...The State House of Representatives mangled the governor's "A plus" bill with 23 amendments, which varied wildly in worthiness, but included free textbooks for poor children and specialized instruction for pupils deemed "at risk...
...And contrariwise, as if the special talent of any individual Hoosier were the product of the Total Indiana Experience, thereby the result of everybody's mixing in...
...Take Larry Bird of French Lick and the Celtics...
...In all of this an unstated, unexamined assumption pushes itself along: if you were born and raised in Indiana, you are bound to grow up knowing the right thing to do, how the game is supposed to be played...
...As if a few extraordinary persons could endow the commonalty with their singular excellences...
...Once again, the Hoosiers have an opportunity to put their collective character to the test, this time with the urgent problem of repairing and improving the state's system of public education as the purpose...
...Whether or not the governor succeeded in making the General Assembly understand how scandalously poor public education has become, he did get President Reagan to mention the matter during a visit to Purdue University and Secretary of Education William Bennett to endorse the "A plus" program in a nationally publicized speech in San Francisco and then at an appearance in Indianapolis...
...Nor did they like the idea of rewarding improved accomplishment in successful schools any more than they did singling out superior teachers with merit pay raises...
...Take Don Mattingly...
...Showing a passionate conviction previously undetected in his courtly manner, the governor scoured the state for whatever help he could summon to lobby the General Assembly...
...Because the Republicans by Kent Owen hold a slight margin in the House and a ten-seat advantage in the Senate, the governor is at odds largely with his fellow Republicans, who are reluctant to raise taxes in any form...
...But before Americans at large rush to emulate Indiana—or Hoosiers get the idea they are the chosen people—the state of mind that is as much Indiana as the territory itself needs a thorough inspection...
...such heroes as proof of superior merit, the triumph of Indiana's essential character over those without the law...
...THE HOOSIER SPECTATOR A STATE ON THE BRINK W hen my mother was a child, she used to complain to her brother that the family reunion at Basses' Ford had become as tiresome as all get-out, and she didn't want to go...
...Ignoring the $372.5 million cost of the original 31-point bill, the House provided no means of raising the revenue necessary to cover all the desiderata...
...Which it well may be...
...That the committee's chairman should be Rep...
...The next constitution in 1851 did pretty much the same thing, and it wasn't until well into the 1870s that the noble intentions of Indiana's elected leaders were realized through a balance of state and local support for the schools...
...He makes pro basketball, that harum-scarum sport of the overpaid and underdisciplined, a miracle of uncanny passes and startling shots...
...Conventional excuses are trotted out: erosion of academic standards throughout America (viz., SAT scores), promiscuous television-watching, pernicious influences within the youth counterculture, toxic substances in the air, food, and water, and maybe the inability of Indianapolis to capture a major league baseball franchise...
...What actual impact the strong words of the President and the secretary will eventually have on the progress of the bill through the General Assembly will come out in the event that the governor calls a special session of the General Assembly, which he will probably be obliged to do, styling it "summer school for legislators who need remedial work...
...But if the fostering of character is really the paramount value of such intense exercises, then it is time to find out what the Hoosiers have learned from playing the game...
...People who find basketball dull or whose idea of Indiana is a reticule of interstate highways must be baffled by all this fuss...
...What happened to oratorical contests, debating teams, spelling bees, school newspapers and yearbooks, French, German, Spanish, and Latin clubs...
...Why should Indiana be struggling to stay out of the cellar in practically every category of educational accomplishment...
...But it's hard for Hoosiers to realize that if they hurry to claim IU's Steve Alford of New Castle, the cleanest-living, purest-thinking, straightest-shooting basketball player, then they must do the same for IU's Jonathan Jay Pollard of South Bend, whose dishonor is as much the Hoosier's lot as Alford's shining victory...
...After 175 years of hybridizing, has the poor white Appalachian strain —the Ur Hoosiers—been so inbred and diffused that the whole state now suffers from a preponderance of ignoramuses...
...That homely advice still works...
...Because Hoosiers believe themselves divinely appointed as the truest Americans, the slightest instance is held to confirm the wondrous if mysterious workings of God's plan...
...Is this a common yearning for a better, simpler, freer America...
...The Yankee first-baseman from Evansville hits better than almost anyone in baseball, and his fielding is up to that of the late Gil Hodges of Petersburg...
...Incidentally, this is an old story in Indiana because the state's first constitution in 1816 proudly instituted free public schooling, but gallantly declined to pay for it...
...Though farfetched, it is not self-evidently invalid, no more so than Marxism (Groucho, not Karl...
...In a more complex way so is the predicament of Rear Admiral John Poindexter of Odon, whose shame is not his ouster as national security adviser because of the lamentable Iran-contra affair, but his refusal to tell the House's investigative committee in a manly, forthright way what he did know...
...Although Hoosiers seldom go in for desperate remedies (the Klan proved the folly of that in the twenties), Governor Robert D. Orr has set before the General Assembly a comprehensive program of educational reforms stressing evaluation, accountability, performance rewards, smaller-sized classes, and a longer school year (Indiana has the shortest at 175 days, which actually averages 167...
...Why should Indiana suddenly become The Great Good Place...
...Does this signal the onset of the New Dark Ages...
...Well, it ought to do us a lot of good," Uncle Bill observed, "because it should take some of the conceit out of us...
...Hoosiers are quick to light upon Kent Owen is Indiana editor of The American Spectator...
...50 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1987...
...As an all-round player, he's the best to come out of Indiana since Edd Roush of the Reds, who, by the way, is still the squire of Oakland City, stalwart as an oak at 94...
...For all his oafish ways, Bird is the finest at the game since Oscar Robertson of Indianapolis, whose unexcelled talents set the standard...
...The Indiana State Teachers Association was predictably all for higher salaries, but opposed to standardized testing of pupils and teachers...
Vol. 20 • June 1987 • No. 6
