By: Butch Swank | butch@goodladandswank.com | President, SWFL Business Alliance + Owner, Goodlad & Swank Insurance, LLC
A while back, I wrote an article about the real benefit to young people using “Yes, ma’am and No, sir.” My point was that these days, it’s almost an oddity to hear a kid demonstrate that level of respect, and the ones that do are well-received and should go far in life. We’re hamstringing our kids by not teaching them many of the fundamental rules of society. For this article, I’d like to address a similar point: How can we better provide guidance to kids who were never given it?
When you hear a “Yes, ma’am,” the automatic assumption is that this kid was either raised in the South or was taught by someone who cared for them to respect their elders. Let’s face it: respect is a core foundation of our American culture. It is both hard-earned and easily lost. That is why we revere it. Respect for others and yourself signals that you are well-adjusted to society and likely have the fundamental skills to succeed. Not having it, statistically speaking, rarely ends in a happy and fulfilling life.
To me, this implies that a kid who never uses these phrases: 1. Is actually disrespectful and thinks they’re on the exact same level as any adult they’re talking to, or 2. They were never taught to do so in the first place. A while ago, I was on an elementary school advisory committee. Over my time there, during our discussions, we got to hear some great stories and some sad ones. One that stands out is a brilliant kid the teachers really cared for but struggled to educate. The kid would openly share with his teacher that he was encouraged to play video games and get high upon returning home rather than study. Of course, for privacy reasons, the committee was never told the kid’s name, and at the time, I thought, what could I even do to help fix this? It bugs me to this day to think we can so often hear of a tremendous wrong yet have no mechanism to help. This was an elementary student, so what does that mean—he was maybe eleven years old? Yeah, it really is heartbreaking.
But please also consider the parents. How were they raised? In nature and life, patterns repeat themselves. Parents tend to raise their kids just as they were raised. I also got the sad impression that this kid was not a one-off or a highly unusual experience for the teachers. Man, imagine having to navigate that daily in your professional life. Teachers have a rewarding job, but good Lord, it must also be emotionally draining sometimes. They simply do not get the credit they deserve. I know, I know, there are some scumbag teachers out there, but we should never let the very few bring down the many. The broader point is that we’re currently sending so many kids out into the real world, effectively rudderless, with no knowledge of how to navigate it.
What does all this mean? To me, it means we, as a culture, are failing our youth—you know, the next generation to inherit this amazing experiment in freedom, which is the USA. To keep this brief, I peg the blame on two things. First, our culture has not just allowed but actively encouraged a perpetual childhood. For example, “Adulting is hard” is a common phrase heard now. Yeah, no sheet! (This is a family show, so I won’t type what I’m really thinking.) Of course, being an adult is hard. It is a daily struggle to navigate life’s challenges while maintaining family and work relationships. If you have children, the complexities can become even more challenging to manage, and we all suffer from the sky-high prices of the current economy. To remedy this, I think we should begin as early as middle school to provide real-world skills and tools to students. Here are some starter suggestions: What is a checking account? What are bills? How do I manage money? Why does my paycheck look smaller than “it’s supposed to”? What are taxes? How do I buy a home? How do I behave when meeting new people? Do I really have to shake people’s hands? Is it a good idea to ask for a raise or promotion after my second week at a new job?
It’s quite clear that our school systems don’t even try to impart that kind of wisdom to kids today. The principals and teachers deserve no blame in my book, which leads to my second point. I’ll share two facts I recently learned. Did you know that nationwide, between 2000 and 2019, the number of school administrators increased by 87.6%, while the number of teachers went up by only 8.7%? Here’s another disturbing fact for you. In 2018, there were 264,240 administrators nationally compared to 1,415,580 elementary school teachers. Think about it this way: do we really need one administrator for every six teachers? I recently attended an artificial intelligence tech manager’s presentation on what’s cooking in that world (a lot, it was very interesting). Back to business, in passing, the speaker said he manages one hundred or so people. That means in the education world, we have sixteen managers for one hundred teachers, and this guy, dealing with cutting-edge AI software, can (very) successfully manage one hundred? Something is clearly broken in our education system, and radical change is needed.
I’d also like to point out that none of this unhealthy bloat was deliberate or done with bad intentions. Quite simply, pretty much all administrative government institutions inevitably grow too big over a long enough time period. Think of the story of the frog in the kettle of cold water with the stove just lit. Initially, the frog is comfortable and has no idea he is on the menu. It should be dawning on us that we’re the frog, and instead of doing the backstroke, we should begin attempting to convince the cook to go vegan. “Brussels sprouts taste way better than frog legs, trust us!”
That’s a terrible analogy, but you get my point. So many administrators only seem to end up pulling teachers every which way except their primary task of enabling the next generation not just to survive but also flourish. So, let’s begin to rethink HOW we teach kids, and let’s also rethink where to allocate the money school districts get. As a businessman dealing with numbers daily, I say a great place to start would be to quickly bring the number of administrators back down to a reasonable level by analyzing real-world performance and retaining the highest performers, shifting that now excess payroll money to vastly raise teacher pay, while being sure to keep the high-performing teachers. All this would then attract all the natural-born teachers who have rightly stayed away from teaching because of the current situation. Yes, of course, I am oversimplifying things, but I believe my point is valid regardless, and we’ve got to start somewhere. These two solutions, if solely focused on, can yield immediate and positive results for our kids, adults, culture, and America as a whole.
For some reason, the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” has always annoyed me, but an exception is required in this case. Our school systems are clearly “broke,” and we damn sure need to fix them. Each and every one of these kids deserves to have the educational and cultural rudder our society has failed to provide so many for far too long. To wrap it up, please consider that without a rudder, it is impossible to change direction.
Of course, I am a businessman, and my personality cannot let this article purely be about social commentary. I’m only adding this because I have some exciting news to share. A few years ago, we formed the Southwest Florida Business Alliance, SWFLBA.com, which has had many successes. Our membership has grown to include several successful and influential business leaders. The organization has made over 1,400 contacts and coalesces an Executive Advisory Board of 47 subject matter experts who make themselves available to advise on all sorts of regional and state topics and who help write many of the articles that appear in this paper. The Alliance members believe that we are on the precipice of better things in Lee County, and we look forward to accomplishing something we can ALL be proud of.
