Faithful readers: I feel I should share a post I put on social media so I am taking one day away from my usual installments of my book. This matters a great deal to me. Ah, well. I sweat the stuff from other countries and especially the US. The Americans are our neighbors, and yes, they have made some mistakes and are still making some. But I have travelled to the US many times, most parts of the country, and always been met with great kindness. It's hard to watch the pain that America is going through right now, the confrontations between the Black Lives Matter demonstrators and the various levels of police down there.

As a Canadian aching and fearing for my American cousins (I literally do have many American cousins), my opinion may be off base because it is coming from a non-American and from outside of the situation.

But I think that in this despairing debate one thing is not being said. 

Fix the public schools. In every state and county, city and town. Well-paid, highly qualified, motivated teachers. In good facilities. Then put respect, balance, sensitivity, etc. into the curriculum explicitly. Teachers who are lukewarm on teaching such balance ...gone, no second chances. And the respect should be taught not just between black and white. Asian, Hispanic, native American, Muslim, Jewish, white, Christian, etc., etc. must be in there as well. True pluralism as a way of life. 

Yes, this will be hard. But I think it clearly also will be totally worth the work. A democracy gets stronger and stronger the more diversity/pluralism it can synthesize in its citizenry. Measurably, statistically, demonstrably stronger. It becomes an ecosystem of greater and greater biodiversity. Many kinds of talents interacting with and strengthening each other.

A decade at least to make a difference? I admit, yes, it takes that long. More like a generation. But it's real. It's more than just grief, rage, fear, and despair. And endless rhetoric.

And if a nation neglects its schools? I think I don't need to describe the result.

Don't like paying school taxes when you no longer have kids in school or you never had kids in the public schools? Too bad. If you want to live in peace instead of chaos, pain, and death, school taxes are the price. The public schools are your one real, long term hope.

How I wish I were famous! I'd put this message out there on every medium, over and over, until I dropped down dead shouting it at the ocean. It matters that much.