THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

PUBLIC MUSEUM NIXES CHRISTMAS AS WINTER HOLIDAY

Maybe it's about time for the taxpayers to put a lump of coal in the Grand Rapids Public Museum's Christmas stocking.

In a half-page full-color display in yesterday's Grand Rapids Press, the museum purported to educate us in the many ways in which West Michiganders celebrate "winter holidays".  The feature regaled us with the charms of Diwali, Hanukkah, St. Lucia's Day, Chinese New Year, and even that most ersatz of holidays (winter or otherwise), Kwanzaa.  It cajoled us to understand these celebrations of Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Swedes, Chinese, and allegedly African-Americans as part of appreciating the diversity of our community.

I say "allegedly" regarding the celebration of Kwanzaa by African-Americans, because the only December holiday I have ever known black friends and colleagues to celebrate is Christmas.  Now that brings up something rather interesting about the museum's winter holiday piece in the Press.  Nowhere does it make even the slightest acknowledgment that Christmas also happens to be a wintertime holiday, and I daresay not a particularly obscure one.  In fact it is the most important holiday of the season for that one-third of the world's population who are Christians.  Ah, but then, you wouldn't know that Christians even exist by reading the museum's winter holiday feature.  Hindus, Sikhs, and Jews do abound (apparently even in River City), but not Christians who outnumber them combined, both here and throughout the world.

Then again the whole notion of confabulating all of these disparate celebrations as winter holidays is misbegotten.  I doubt that snowflakes and horse-drawn sleighs are images that Hindus commonly associate with their celebration of Diwali, as most of India enjoys a tropical clime.  Similarly with most celebrants of Chinese New Year.  Winter is merely incidental to Hanukkah, as well as Christmas.  Both are international holidays and celebrated with as much gusto where it is summer in December as where the snow blows that time of year.

Surely, the museum's managers are not so ignorant as to not know this.  Therefore, it is safe to conclude that their rationale for lumping all of these celebrations together in the Press as "winter holidays", to the pointed exclusion of Christmas, is to diminish the prominence of Christmas.  This is especially evident when one considers the very small fraction of area residents who celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah, St. Lucia's Day, Chinese New Year, and Kwanzaa.  Moreover, their true aim is further exposed in that, if the Press feature merely sought to highlight the diversity of local ethnic groups by way of the current season, then they had a host of national Christmas traditions available for inclusion in that piece.

As the prominence of Christmas is the consequence of a plain demographic fact -- i.e., the overwhelming majority of West Michiganders are Christians and for most of them the birth of Jesus is second only to His resurrection as a celebration of their faith -- and hardly anything nefarious, its diminishment is driven by a multiculturalist ideology rather than the pedagogical mission that is properly that of a public museum.  Even so, I would not recommend that Christians as Christians get too riled about this bit of politically correct obnoxiousness that the museum's managers put on display in the Press (a piece which, by the way, was sponsored by the Press).  After all, Christmas is still what it is regardless of their snub of it in their list of wintertime holidays.

However, taxpayers might want to give some thought as to whether or not their hard-earned dollars should support a public museum being used to disseminate propaganda instead of facts.

DESIGNING BUREAUCRATS

Just to be clear, I think the law of firm of Warner Norcross & Judd is a band of bandits.  So I'm shedding no tears for these shysters, having lost their grip on the city government after the departure of Boss Logie and now getting slammed by the Grand Rapids Planning Commission last week.

Nevertheless, I must say that the Planning Commission's denial of Warner Norcross's request for additional street level signage on the Fifth Third Building downtown was obnoxious.  It appears that certain members of that commission -- i.e., Shaula Johnston -- don't get what their public mandate is.  The Planning Commission has no authority to design what we build in River City.  They really don't even have the authority to plan it.  What they do have the authority to do is approve or deny projects based upon city ordinances.

For example, Warner Norcross asked the Planning Commission to approve erecting new signs with its name and logo at its main offices in the Fifth Third Building.  However, city ordinance limits the total amount a commercial signage permitted on a site, and the on-site signage for just Fifth Third Bank alone already excceeded that amount.  So Warner Norcross had to make the case that a special hardship existed that would make the application of the ordinance unjust and allow the Planning Commission to use its lawful discretion to exempt the law firm's signage from the ordinance.

Apparently the Planning Commission did not find a special hardship -- no doubt because Warner Norcross has been headquarted in the same building for four decades with no one having trouble finding the firm -- and denied the request.  So far, so good.  Whether or not the signage ordinance is good public policy, the Planning Commission has to make its decision based upon it.

That seems to elude Commissioner Johnston who was offended by the very fact that Warner Norcross had made this request.  According to the Grand Rapids Press, Johnston excoriated the law firm for proposing signs with its logo as "unclassy".  O, the horrors of a business wanting its logo on advertising!  Then the thoroughly estimable commissioner added, "I feel it's offensive that [Warner Norcross] think they're so special that they need something different."  Different?  Oh, that's right.  How odd that a business would want its sign on the building it's located in.

As for Warner Norcross thinking it's special, well, that IS the case a petitioner has to make when asking for an exemption from a city ordinance.  To be offended by that is to be offended by the very process of petitioning the Planning Commission.  One wonders how Johnston endures in her post with all those "offensive" petitioners submitting their "unclassy" designs to her.

EL DORADO, BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN, AND THE GRAND RAPIDS PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT

Those of us not in straitjackets are fairly certain that lands of fabulous wealth free for the taking do not exist.  There is no El Dorado with streets paved of gold, no Big Rock Candy Mountain with cigarette trees and whiskey lakes, and no Shangri-la to ply us with every physical pleasure imaginable.  Also there is no Grand Rapids Public School District with money growing on trees to build grand palaces of secondary education to the tune of $165 million.

Alas, there is a very real Grand Rapids Public School District, one that is on verge of meltdown in terms of both finances and performance.  The near-bankruptcy of the GRPS is well-known.  Likewise, the poor student performance.  The latter was confirmed once again just this past week.  On the most recent standardized test for high schoolers, all four of the district's comprehensive high schools failed.  (Well, they all got the fig leaf that they hadn't actually failed yet but were only at the cliff's edge.)  The educrats complained that it was a new test so the kids weren't ready for it.  Translation:  School officials weren't given enough time to teach to the new test.  Of course, there is nothing new about readin', writin', and 'rithmetic, so if the GRPS had been sticking to the basics, no test old or new should be an issue.

Now comes a select committee to provide GRPS officials with a bevy of suggestions to improve the district's high schools.  Astonishingly they say it's not all that hard to do.  Just spend scores of millions of taxpayer dollars on renovations and new construction!  The committee wanted to consider a wide range of options, and so they did.  Their suggestions ranged from nicking the taxpayers for anywhere between $120 million and $165 million.  Unfortunately, the committee's plans for rebuilding the district's high schools didn't explain where the money would come from nor how new bricks-and-mortar would solve the endemic lack of discipline that is at the core of poor student performance.

Thus, we can only conclude that the committee knows something we don't know.  The Grand Rapids Public School District is an El Dorado where nothing but riches and pleasures can be found to eliminate any problem.  Indeed, according to the Grand Rapids Press, some GRPS officials actually said that the taxpayers would not have pick up the entire tab.  Well, why not buy into that fantasy?  Avoiding reality has been S.O.P. for the GRPS for quite awhile now, and those running the show haven't had any trouble getting their wallets fattened by the taxpayers in the process.

Unfortunately, the education of our children is a little too important to indulge in make-believe, no matter how much that has served city educrats so well over the past couple of decades.  So let's deal with an ugly truth.  Those running the Grand Rapids Public School District, starting with Superintendent Bernard Taylor, have given up on the kids currently in the system.  They do not want to do any of the heavy-lifting needed to help these students, so many of whom come from broken families and rotten neighborhoods, to learn the basics they need as adults to be responsible, productive, and self-reliant.  Instead they want to mask the poor performance of these students by drawing into the GRPS higher performing students from charter, parochial, and suburban schools who will by their numbers raise the district's average test scores and so make GRPS officials look better.

Hence the mantra of the select committee and GRPS officials to build a Shangri-la of educational facilities and programs that look and feel like the suburban school districts.  By some weird logic city educrats think pouring fresh concrete and slapping together specialty schools for the performing arts (but not plumbing, machining, and auto repair) will make parents overlook the deficient substance of education in the Grand Rapids Public School District.  Of course, GRPS officials have no excuse for not knowing that this doesn't work after the repeated failure of new buildings and speciality programs to pull in students currently attending non-district schools.  But then why should they let reality intrude so long as the taxpayers keep sending them paychecks and funding their pension plans?