Posted by
Sam Heath on Sunday, October 15, 2006 9:14:34 AM
As with molestation that knows no bounds of economic, religious, or any other position in society, the culture of corruption in politics seems to have no limits whether Republican or Democrat and it certainly filters through our schools and social services as well. But in these two cases it is usually masked by what is aptly named the “Cloak of confidentiality.”
This cloak of confidentiality hides the sins of many government bureaucracies like the schools and social services and thwarts many well intended attempts to discover abuses in these various agencies and organizations. The Bakersfield Californian has made many such attempts and has gone to court many times trying to get information that could be helpful in exposing evil doers and things like bureaucratic abuses of power.
My work in the ghetto and barrio schools where I would come to know personnel from social services and probation officers better than many parents taught me much about how the cloak of confidentiality obscures and thwarts many attempts to help children. And in few other areas of government bureaucracies are things so hidden from public view as in the schools and social services where even the most dedicated and honest workers quickly realize they are unwilling participants in obfuscation.
Take the work of the “Resource Specialist” for example. While working under contract in this capacity for the Stanislaus County Department of Education I was responsible for the special education programs in seven rural school districts. My IEP’s had to include the entire panoply of school services from the school psychologist, speech pathologist, every teacher involved with each child, continual interaction with every special needs child under my jurisdiction. But the general public would be appalled at the abuses, the thoroughgoing ineptitude and incompetence in this system of the school hierarchy veiled behind the cloak of confidentiality.
Dianne Hardisty has done a good job exposing the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to do business with the state controller’s office, and correctly sums the problem by writing “While it might be easy to make the state controller the "bad guy" in this controversy, the real blame rests with the Legislature and the governor.” But I believe Dianne would agree one of the most frustrating problems is created by people who are not good citizens, people who don’t trouble themselves to study issues and candidates for political office, and at worst don’t even bother to vote!
While employed as a CPS investigator I was standing outside the courthouse when a man walked up to me and in tears asked “What gives you people the power to come into my home and take my children away from me?” I asked him in turn, “Can you name your representative in the state legislature or Congress?” He could not. I went on tell this man the power of CPS comes directly from his elected political leadership, not the agency.
But from the White House on down We the People are confronted by politicians that are only transparent in degrees of stupidity. Take this comment by Mayor Marion Barry of Washington, DC for example: “Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.” And how about this beauty by Al Gore: “It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.” And when it comes to an uncaring bureaucracy how about this: “Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.” --Department of Social Services, Greenville , South Carolina.
It isn’t a lack of genuine and caring people in our institutions designed to care for and protect children; but even the best qualified are discouraged by the incompetents having the power in our schools, social services, and other government agencies. However even my writing extensively over the past decades about such abuses of power won’t solve the problem of how the best people don’t make it to positions of power and influence. The books about this continue to multiply, TV talk shows and pundits without number keep hacking at the branches of evil while the root continues to spread and in the end even Henry Thoreau was forced to the metaphysical attempting to make sense of this.