Opus 2016-90: Tax Dollars at Work: Horatio Alger Is Back

It was presented as an inspirational story.  A young man was introduced as Captain _____.  He was presented as the youngest man to fly solo around the world and since that isn’t enough in our politically correct world, he was the first African-American to fly solo around the world.  The first was impressive.  The second is racist.

He did a good job in his presentation.  His parents came to the US from Jamaica but he portrayed a childhood lived in the hood.  He had no money but managed to get scholarships for a degree in aeronautical engineering and someone paid for his training as a pilot.  He decided he wanted to fly around the world, had no money and found a way to get people to sponsor him as he built an airplane and made the trip.  He is now traveling around the country working with school children in disadvantaged areas teaching them to dream and follow their dreams.  He claimed that he had kids building race cars from the ground up. 

Good stuff.  The problem is that we had wi-fi available at the meeting and the teacher in the row in front of me Googled the guy.

I did not read what he found.  I believe that everything the “Captain” told us was based on facts.  What was on the web-sight that he showed me was that little point of info that the speaking fee he charged ranged from $15,000 to 24,000.  That isn’t bad for a half hour presentation.  I would like to think that he came to speak to us for free but I am not naive.  At the beginning of his presentation he shared that he did a lot of deception and con work to get in to see his first benefactor.  I was under the impression when he was billed as “Captain” that he was in the Air Force.  Only slowly did I realize that was not true.  Add to that the fact that there was never any indication that he was being paid to speak.  I am not sure what was true and what was lies.

I’ll tell you what I do know.  We don’t have money for a librarian.  We don’t have money for new text books.  Our furniture is falling apart.  We have ceiling tiles falling in the hallways and floor tiles coming up.  In a world where we can’t supply the needs of the students our leaders somehow find money to pay a motivational speaker.

No we don’t need more money in education.  We need more common sense and honesty.

homo unius libri