Dear Mayor Brandon Johnson,
I sent you a letter awhile ago telling you I was also writing to Dorval Carter of the CTA, and that I would forward you the letter. I sent it to you, with another copy of my art magazine, Blueprint for a Greener World, the other day; you should have received it by now.. The letter details in 16 points my ideas for the CTA system.
In any case, it is clear to me that education is also up—in our world, and in our city. I have a couple of points to make regarding it. Firstly, Chicago teachers are getting paid enough! Is it fair that they get pensions while most other jobholders don’t, in our city? I don’t think so, though I’m not sure whether they pay into Social Security. I know the Supreme Court said the city has to pay them their pensions, which it should, as the pensions have been promised them. Maybe pensions could be phased out, though! Not until every Chicago worker is paid fair wages that include yearly cost-of-living adjustments will your work be done, in my opinion.
Secondly, upon reading the website for the school board candidates for my district—District 2—I realize one important viewpoint regarding CPS education. This is that there is a lot of idealism among the system’s workers, which is a good thing. This romanticism includes these ideas: all kids deserve to have a school that they can walk to. Students should expect to learn foreign languages if they have a significant presence in the student body. Nurses and social workers should be present at every school. Art and music programs should be decent and running at each school. Finally, teachers should expect to be paid well.
Let me laud the CPS system, before I proceed, for trying to reach the goals I have mentioned, along with trying to bus students when appropriate; trying to earn money for the schools not by taxing homeowners; trying to teach disabled people; being transparent about who the candidates for the school board are—the website I saw was beautiful; potentially being willing to take school board advice not to use police presence in the schools; and other fine methods for educating and inspiring our youth, tomorrow’s leaders, even to the point of making room for magnet and special schools (such as Edison Regional Gifted Center, which my partner and I have some experience with) when other more traditional education situations are still delinquent in the focus of the city, deserving more attention and resources.
Anyway, in the face of such idealism, I think it’s time to ask what we want our city to be teaching the kids, and I have answers:
1. I say, we should learn about our bodies! What better place to start early preventing injury? Injury that could mean lost productivity—and hurt—later in life. Injury that could mean visits to physical therapists who may finally pay attention to you, and care! My experience treating my condition of pathology from sitting too much makes me concerned for children and teachers who sit much of the day. I direct you to nutritiousmovement.com , Move Your DNA, and Sitting Kills, Moving Heals. If today’s CPS teachers can’t teach the human body, find others who can—such as folks who know acupressure, which could show all of us how to care for each other’s health. Nutrition, too. (My November 23 speech, “What Is Food?” will be at the College of Complexes and streamed by Zoom; I could email you the link if you want. You might like to hire me as a nutrition co-coach for school meals.)
2. There are other ways to keep young minds busy and learning and help society at the same time. Like learning other languages: the world is a big place! Why should we expect that problems, including the production of beautiful children themselves, will be solved only using English? Lazy lovers can always choose mates from English-speaking Nigeria or India, as well as the USA. Spanish has the same alphabet as English—it’s spoken by one of our two
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neighboring countries. Not different enough to build bridges across the planet, I say! Spanish should be required, but so should other languages—this could be a way to create loyalty groups
among the older student body of schools—I’m thinking, those who are learning Ethiopian, or
Persian, or Navaho. What happened to Sister Cities, by the way?
3. Cursive is still an art that should be taught, as students learn to write in other languages’ scripts as well as in English. Some people can write cursive well; some who only learn to sign their names in longhand won’t have to learn it. But some could help society and the world by working to preserve great people’s ideas and quotations—like the patriotic words of Black leaders, for example. For both children and adults, some people’s cursive writing could be used to write out great words of the memorable—like Dr. Frederick Douglass; Dr. Coretta Scott King; and the Bill of Rights, etc. In cursive form, personality is expressed; humanity is communicated; readers can even, perhaps, experience soul. Maybe some people would come up with writing styles that would make good fonts when translated into worldwide computer use—these could be marketed.
4. With today’s long-lived art supplies, children’s and mentally “ill” folks’ art therapy work could be saved and sold. This would help communities by developing and showing local talent. As a former School of the Art Institute of Chicago student, I can see worthwhile artistic production by these groups; saving kids’ homework could be taken to a different, moneymaking level! Engaging artists to help people learn while expressing themselves, and learn while creating marketable artwork, could be done, starting right here in Chicago. For non-artists, making and selling frames for peers’ artwork might be a way to raise money for the education system. Artists and teachers, I see, should work with wisdom figures and parents to create templates for kids to use for learning and expression, like some lessons in math, reading, etc. that are already in use, and identify artistic results. How about partnering kids with performance artists? Letting our children and mentally “ill” folks’ expressions lead us to further humanity is an idea whose time has come!
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5. Meanwhile, hordes of talk, art, music, and dance therapists are needed for people to get over the buffeting of them by our immature world. Schools need tons of social workers!
6. How about exposing children to different bioregions? My UN-declared World Ocean Year
idea would see landlocked children traveling to see the ocean for the first time.
7. My ARTEMIS plan could be worked on by kids communicating with other kids—from other countries—making a collection of bad-health-preventive practices from all over the world. American Recovery Team, Ecological Muse, International Synthesis!
I’d like to meet with you and my Senator, Mike Simmons, for lunch at Ethiopian Diamond, on Broadway. Mike and I both love that place. We could throw other positive ideas around—and catch them!
Kindly,
C. Jenny Walbridge
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