What Does It Matter Who the Writer (Speaker) Is?

What does it matter who the writer (speaker) is? What is important is her very important insight into how caring members of the profession feel -- and how they are frustrated and stymied by the system, so no improvement is ever possible, and we are deliberately distracted instead onto trivial issues like "Who is the writer who dares to speak?"

I'm stunned that even such an honest appraisal of the department of education was not censored/ edited by the conspiratorial agents within the newspaper -- not allowing anybody but the union spokespersons to speak for everybody else.

That's what the education professionals have given up -- the right to bargain and speak for themselves -- instead of being treated like the students they teach, who are told what to think, instead of how to think. And that is the grave problem of Hawaii -- that people look for the seal of approval from the union or Democratic Party before they can say for themselves, "That makes a lot of sense. Why shouldn't the teachers be allowed to have a voice and control in how they can best do their job?"

That is the right they vote to give up by deciding that only the union spokesperson can speak for all of them -- and in that way, leverage their bargaining position for more pay. But as any professional knows, what makes them truly a professional, is the right to do their art their own way -- by how they determine is best, because they can think for themselves in their field of expertise.

But if they nullify those rights in thinking that only the money is important, and not the freedom to do their job as best as they themselves can determine, then they've turned themselves into mere cogs in the machine who have to obey the right of might, and the majority rules -- and not what is best for themselves as individuals.

That destroys the whole rationale for education -- of discovering the potential of each student rather than the teacher determining beforehand, only and all that it can be, because it is only the teaching that is important, and not the learning -- beyond the instruction, where any real learning and usefulness takes place.

And thus so many people are produced in the Hawaii education system, who are only capable of repeating what has been taught to them, instead of discovering the unknown -- which is the future, and not merely repeating the past endlessly, as though nothing else is possible.

And so the problems of Hawaii can never be solved -- because they haven't been in the past, and the leaders don't know what to do when the beaches and parks become overcrowded with the homeless, and the crime overruns government and society, the sewers and roads break down, and nobody in government feels accountable and empowered to speak and do anything with any initiative and their own judgment.

And reporters are bullied and intimidated if they try to report the truth, and are censored and edited themselves in so many ways, because nobody wants to hear the truth anymore, or allow it.

And that is why life is very hard and frustrating now, particularly in Hawaii. It doesn't have to be that way -- but that's the only thing they know, and will allow.

That is the importance of freedom of speech -- and not just the right to force people only to say what the powers that be allow them to say.