I briefly attended the talk that Senator Wellstone gave in Silsby last week. While I was there he was speaking about the problems that many Americans face today. What topped the list? Health care, child care -- for the most part, he was talking about how a family with a combined income of about $30,000 would afford vital services such as these in the face of ballooning costs.
I remarked to my friend with whom I was attending the lecture that most of the people in the room don't now or soon won't have to worry about how to afford these things. It was also interesting to see the manner in which the senator adjusted his remarks accordingly. He talked more in the abstract, about what the country has told him as he's traveled and what he thinks the country needs. Instead of people in the audience applauding for things they needed, people were nodding sagely about things that need to be done for others.
This altruism is admirable, but I also wonder how well many of us related to what he was talking about. This is why I was particularly interested when he began to speak of real visits he had made to poor parts of the country. It reminded me of a discussion I had with a friend while I was at home.
Allow me to give you some background on this guy. Seth was an underachiever in high school. He was definitely not one for homework, but he was a pretty bright kid. I guess the reason he didn't go to college was that he was too lazy to apply. College is what most graduates of my high school do, if for no better reason than to follow the crowd. He simply didn't care, and so he didn't bother.
After high school, he went down to D.C., where his brother was living in a house with a bunch of other guys. Down there he enrolled in the D.C. community college for the Fall. This is where his story got interesting for me. It certainly gave me a glimpse into the lives that the senator was referring to.
The students of this community college were all much older. Maybe an average age of 30. Seth stood out in that respect, but in terms of education and background he was vastly different also. Even with the lack of interest that he had exhibited in high school, Seth was still much better prepared for these classes than were his classmates.
His sociology professor told him, "Seth, you're too smart; you don't have to come to class anymore." This same kid who had gotten Cs and Ds in high school was now getting As without any effort. Keeping this in mind, now, one day this same professor posed a question to the class: "Is the institution you attend as important as the diploma you receive?" Seth was the only person in this class who said that the institution was as important as the diploma. The professor agreed with the majority in the class, conceding that the diploma was more important.
However, after class he pulled Seth aside and said, "You know, Seth, it really is important where you go, but I can't tell these people that." At this point in his story, I recalled one of the recent student complaints on campus. We now have to wait half an hour to get our printouts. There they have four computers on campus for student use. One of them is even connected to the Internet.
Not to say that we shouldn't complain about things we don't like or try to change what needs fixing, but we certainly are a world away from that community college in Washington, D.C., and it is often too easy to nod along and lament the sights that our senator relates to us instead of seeing and understanding these things first hand.
