Provide quality time for professional staff development to improve curriculum instruction.
Provide a curriculum that reflects cultural diversity.
Wire every classroom to the Internet and provide staff development for training, effective curriculum suggestions, and adequate resources.
Provide opportunity for community-service programs that will apply as academic credit for graduation.
Provide more creative programs for all interested students for after school and during the summer.
Develop high expectations.
Act as if we mean it (because we do) when we say, “KIDS BELONG IN SCHOOL!”
(Source: The Official Jesse Ventura for Governor website: www.jesseventura.org)
Families must invest in their neighborhood public schools
One thing that’s sadly lacking in our public schools these days is parental involvement. Without it, public schools can’t be what we want them to be. Families have to make personal commitments to their neighborhood schools. If people truly felt deeply involved with their schools, we could turn our schools around. Parents and retirees should be encouraged to get involved in literacy tutoring, in community-service projects, in parenting classes, and in helping out with homework. That’s one of the most beneficial uses I can see for the Internet: It can give parents a direct link to their children’s classroom environment and can open lines of communication between parents and teachers. Education is a cooperative effort: It takes parents and teachers working together as a team.
The best way to solve most of our educational problems is to reduce class size
There’s hardly a more effective way to solve the problems we face in our educational system than to reduce class size. A ratio of no more than seventeen students per teacher ensures more one-on-one contact, better classroom discipline, you name it. Study after study has consistently shown that students do better when they are in classes with fewer students.
Here in Minnesota, we have already allocated the money to reduce class size. Our problem is that there are too many loopholes in the program. The lesson to other states that will be doing the same in the future: You can’t earmark the money for class-size reduction and then leave any loopholes for the legislature to spend it for anything else.
The federal government has too much control over schools
The federal government needs to leave much more of the management of public schools up to state and local governments. A rubber-stamp, “franchise” approach to schooling simply doesn’t work. Students’ needs vary by region; their curricula should too. What works best for one school district isn’t necessarily going to work best for another. The federal government needs to loosen its control of public schools and leave more of the decision making up to local teachers and administrators, who have firsthand knowledge of what their students need.
We need to spend more on students and less on administration
Bringing the decision making closer to home will also help cut administration costs. We spend far too much of our public-school funding on administration. We should be spending more of it on the students. For example, with the money we save, we can work toward getting more computers and Internet access into classrooms, as well as helping students improve their computer skills.
We’ve got to make sure school curricula are relevant
Each school district should be allowed to take responsibility for making sure that their curricula are relevant to their students’ needs. Students are far more likely to learn when they can see a tangible connection between the lessons they are taught and real-world skills that they will need. And the people most qualified to determine the content of those lessons are the people who deal with these students on a daily basis, not a federal bureau thousands of miles away.
We should set minimum standards for all students
At the same time, though, each school district has to make sure that all students meet certain basic criteria. Every student needs to demonstrate a minimum level of competence. Every student should be able to read, for example, by the first grade.
Mainstreaming: the best odds for disabled students
There is overwhelming evidence that the best chance disabled students have for productive adult lives comes from being mainstreamed among other students. My daughter Jade is living proof of that. She has a disability, but Terry and I have made sure that she has gotten the same kinds of exposure as other kids her age. There are a few exceptions; there are students whose special needs are such that mainstreaming wouldn’t work for them. But in the majority of cases, mainstreaming should be supported, encouraged, and facilitated for disabled students.
No government money for higher education
Students shouldn’t simply be handed a free pass to higher education. They should have to work for it. They should at least contribute a significant amount to their tuition through part-time jobs. If they’re smart enough to get in, they’re smart enough to figure out a way to make it work. Part of our problem in this country is that we’ve lost our respect for higher education. We take it for granted because it comes so easily. We don’t value the things that are handed to us the way we value something we’ve put a lot of sweat and sacrifice into. If we insist that students make an investment in their own educations, they’ll get more out of them in the long run.
Students often approached me about state-paid tuition while I was out campaigning. After I explained to them that if the state pays their tuition now, they will pay higher taxes to pay other people’s tuitions for the rest of their lives, most of them ended up agreeing with me. Skip Humphrey was promising to hand them two years of free education, and they still voted for me!
Businesses have a role to play in education, too, because they cannot compete without an educated workforce. Internships, on-the-job training, and individual grants are all win-win situations. It benefits the businesses to have better-trained employees, and it benefits the students to be better prepared to enter their trades. Government’s role in this scenario should be to act only as a facilitator.
Business
Government policy should facilitate business. The more money businesses get to keep, the lower their costs will be, and the less they’ll need to look to government for help. Government’s role should be only to keep the playing field level, and to work hand in hand with business on issues such as employment. But beyond this, to as great an extent as possible, it should get the hell out of the way.
Businesses pay too much in taxes, just as individuals do. Businesses are overtaxed because government has taken over more functions than necessary. We need to figure out which services could be handled better by the private sector. In the hands of the private sector, unlike government, competition will keep quality high and cost low. Once we’re left with only the services that government provides best, we can then figure out ways for it to perform those services as cost-effectively as possible.
Government should encourage people to start small businesses
The government should reward and encourage people who have the initiative and ingenuity to start new businesses. Above all, it shouldn’t make it impossible for them to operate by hamstringing them with an extra tax burden. It’s the nature of capitalism to encourage people to innovate, and government should support that.
Development
Urban sprawl and inner-city rehabilitation
There’s no way we’re going to be able to achieve zero-population growth. We need to understand that communities are going to continue to grow and expand. So we need to plan ahead and direct growth in a way that allows for the best use of available land and resources.
We can’t just let urban growth endlessly sprawl out toward the suburbs and beyond. We’d make much better use of what we have if we revitalized our inner cities. We need to make inner-city living attractive again. We need to make it appealing to developers. If we don’t do that, we’ll end up with a sprawling metropolitan area that’s rotting from the inside out.
/> I like plans that automatically help one problem while they’re fixing another. With more businesses, resources, and capital flowing back into the inner cities, you get more jobs, less poverty, and lower crime.
Building on sacred lands
Even before my inauguration, folks who were protesting the rebuilding of Highway 55 through South Minneapolis on what they believed to be sacred Native American lands were trying to solicit my help. I’m not against protecting sacred lands, but if a piece of land is sacred now, wasn’t it sacred thirty years ago when the housing development that will be demolished for the highway was built? Where were all the protesters then?
It makes me think that this particular issue, and others like it, are more a matter of what the popular way to react is, given the sensitivities we have in our culture right now, than they are about protecting sacred lands. We can’t declare all lands sacred; we can’t have somebody raise a fuss every time we want to build somewhere. For practical reasons, the line has to be drawn somewhere. Who deems what is and is not sacred? What’s sacred to one is not sacred to another.
The Military
I’m against the draft. I believe we should have a professional military; it might be smaller, but it would be more effective. The draft, particularly as we saw it during the Vietnam War, is unfair. Rich kids didn’t get drafted; they went to college and hid. You know who that left for Uncle Sam?
If we’re going to draft at all, which we shouldn’t, then we should draft women too, as long as we don’t send them into combat. Now, I know that there are tough women out there who would be effective in combat. Women give birth—they’re certainly able to withstand pain! There are female triathletes who could make it through SEAL training. I’m certain of that. That’s not the problem.
The problem is men. There’s something inherent in men that makes us want to protect women. And that would be disastrous in battle. You have to act as a unit; you can’t favor some of your soldiers over the others. Can we train ourselves out of it? I don’t know. If it’s just a cultural thing, maybe we could over time. Human beings can override their instincts, but usually not without a good bit of effort. Besides, are we absolutely certain we want to train that protective impulse out of men?
As for our military involvement in the Middle East, I’ve kept an eye on what’s been going on over there the last several years, and I can tell you the reason why we keep getting into scuffles with Saddam Hussein: We need him. The fact that we’ve kept him in power and haven’t taken him out is intentional. We need a bad guy there. We need a reason to keep our military personnel on the pulse of the world’s oil reserves. We put him in there—do you think we couldn’t have taken him down by now if we had wanted to? And he knows it. That’s why he misbehaves!
Social Issues
Crime
People are always shocked when they ask me what I plan to do about crime as governor and my answer comes back as “Nothing!” Does the issue of crime need to be addressed? You bet it does. But, just as with many other social issues, I don’t think that legislation is the most effective arena in which to fight crime. We already have tons of laws on the books. Most of those laws would work more effectively if we just enforced them better.
As governor, there just isn’t a lot I can do beyond that to crack down on crime. Law enforcement is really a local issue. It’s the cops’ job to tighten down on criminals. When I was mayor of Brooklyn Park, I rode with my cops. I’d show up at the station unannounced and take a ride in the squad car so I could see exactly what they were doing out there.
Politicians always like to say “I’m gonna fight crime!” because it sounds great and gets them votes. But when was the last time they got out there on the streets and caught somebody? What can a politician do to fight crime?
We have to crack down not only on the way sentences get handed down in courtrooms but also on what happens after that. Why, for example, do we let criminals out early for good behavior? Shouldn’t criminals be expected to behave in prison? I think they should set it up so that if your sentence is three years and you misbehave, you’ll do five! That’s the mind-set we need.
And I don’t think we need to work so hard at making criminals comfortable, either. Basic needs should be met, yes. Anything less would be inhumane. But I’m against these “country club” prisons where they get cable TV and computers and workout rooms—the kinds of things that a lot of hardworking, law-abiding citizens can’t even afford. It shouldn’t be more comfortable to be in prison than it is to be out.
The death penalty
My dad always used to say, “How come life in prison don’t mean life?” That’s a good question. Because until it does, we’re not ready to do away with the death penalty in this country. Stop thinking in terms of “punishment” for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers. Americans have a right to go about their lives without worrying about these people being back out on the street. So until we can make sure they’re off the streets permanently, we have to grit our teeth and put up with the death penalty. So we need to work toward making a life sentence meaningful again. If life meant life, I could, if you’ll excuse the pun, live without the death penalty.
We don’t have it here in Minnesota, thank God, and I won’t advocate to get it. But I will advocate to make life in prison mean life. I don’t think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties, and while I’m governor, people would always be coming to me to commute them. That’s a heavy responsibility to have on your shoulders. I’ve thought about this. There’s always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent. It would weigh on you pretty drastically if you ever made a mistake. That’s the kind of thing I would have to face on a pretty regular basis if we had the death penalty here.
Of course, for that one part of me that is glad to be relieved of that responsibility, there’s another part of me that hears about these brutal mass murderers and thinks, “Gee, maybe I’d like to walk over and pull the switch.” Would that be a “hands-on” governor?
Drunk driving
There’s no question that we need tougher drunk-driving laws for repeat offenders. We need to take a lesson from European countries, where driving isn’t a right but a privilege. There isn’t a person on this planet by this time who doesn’t know that when you consume alcohol you shouldn’t get behind the wheel of a car. The people who do it anyway should have their privilege to drive taken away.
Marijuana
Our government has the weirdest bias against cannabis. There’s no reason for everybody to be so afraid of it. It’s not the antichrist the DEA makes it out to be. Industrial hemp is a very useful plant. Canada has figured this out; they’re growing hemp already. So what’s the matter with us? I challenged the attorney general to get rid of the criminal stigma associated with hemp so we can look at it in terms of how it might be useful: as an alternative fuel, as a paper source, as a fiber for clothing, or as anything else that might be productive. I believe that God put everything on the earth for a reason. I don’t think cannabis is here just so we can eradicate it.
I also think the government has no business telling us what we can and can’t use for pain relief and in matters of our own health. There are indicators from medical studies that show marijuana can help ease the suffering of people with cancer and AIDS. There’s just no good reason for denying it. The ban on medical marijuana exists for no other reason than the government’s bias. There are plenty of more addicting painkillers out there, legal and readily available.
And if making the stuff illegal was truly going to stop people from using it, wouldn’t it have done so by now? Americans should already have learned that lesson. There are some things it’s better not to try to legislate, because it doesn’t work. I remember my mom comparing the prohibition of drugs to the prohibition of alcohol. She lived through Prohibition, and she told me that the same thing is happening with drugs today
: All you do by making it illegal is make the gangsters rich. As long as there’s a demand for it, we’re not going to be able to eliminate the supply. My answer to the problem is, let’s regulate it! Let’s collect some tax money off of it!
Prostitution and drug possession
With as grave a situation as we’re facing with inner-city crime and the rising crime rate among juveniles, we shouldn’t be wasting so much time and so many resources on prosecuting consensual crimes such as prostitution and drug possession. It should be pretty obvious by now that these are the kinds of social problems that legislation can’t touch. I’m saying we should regulate drugs and prostitution. Those would be more effective ways to handle them.
If you really feel strongly about stopping these kinds of activities, the most effective thing you can do is to work with at-risk individuals yourself, to stop them before they begin. And that kind of prevention doesn’t take government programs. It takes you. Volunteering.
Drug dealing
I hold drug possession and drug dealing as two totally different concepts. The drug dealers who resort to deadly street violence should be dealt with severely as the criminals they are.
But we have to become willing to admit as a nation that our war against drugs has failed. And we have to start looking for other solutions. I want the drug business stopped. But I know it never will stop as long as people want the drugs. It’s supply and demand. The suppliers are so ruthless they can get into any market. You can even get drugs in prison.
But if there was no more demand for drugs, gangs and drug dealers would be out of business. I think the key lies in keeping young people from becoming their customers in the first place. If parents get involved, and if schools educate young people about the dangers of drugs, we can dry up the drug dealers’ customer base. That’s how we win the war.
Gun control
I’m all for gun control, I just define it a little differently. If you can put two rounds into the same hole from twenty-five meters, that’s gun control! But if you’re going to own a gun, you have an obligation to know what you’re doing with it. When the Constitution gave us the right to bear arms, it also made us responsible for using them properly. With the right comes the responsibility. It’s not fair of us as citizens to lean more heavily on one side of that equation than on the other.
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