Excellent public schools bring a bright future

Janice Weiner | Iowa Senate District 45

I’m an Iowan who was launched in life by a first-class public school education. It carried me through college and law school into a career with the U.S. Department of State, where I served my country for 26 years as a U.S. diplomat. I took an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution — and I took it seriously.

This cycle, there are candidates around the country, at all levels, who swore that oath. Some served in the military, some in intelligence services, some in the Foreign Service. What we public servants have in common is this: We spent a career working to support democracy. We were eyewitnesses to people’s thirst for freedom of thought, speech, assembly — and the truth. We have also seen what happens when autocrats are in charge and feel duty bound to ensure it doesn’t happen here.

I was there when the Berlin Wall fell, following months of unrest. I stood in awe of East Germans who risked their lives to tell the truth when that meant distributing clandestinely printed materials and being surveilled by the secret police. And I served twice in Turkey — during the height of the PKK insurgency and again when current President Erdogan took charge and freedoms began to backslide. It can happen.

How do we ensure it doesn’t happen here? We give our children, in all 99 counties, a world class public education, aiming again for that first-in-the-nation public education ranking. We respect our teachers, pay them a fair wage, and restore their collective bargaining rights. We stop vilifying teachers and librarians, instead celebrating their dedication to opening minds and creating world citizens. We roll back restrictions on what history can be taught. Our history is our history, and we do ourselves no favors when we slap blinders on our kids.

I was there when Mikhail Gorbachev allegedly whispered in the ear of East German Communist Party leader Erich Honecker — as East Germans celebrated their 40th anniversary with a torchlight parade and goose steps: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Later that same evening, I stood in an East Berlin church filled with people singing, “We Shall Overcome.” A month later, the Wall was gone.

Excellence in public education is the ticket to a bright future for all Iowans; it is the very definition of the common good.

Janice Weiner is the Democratic candidate in Senate District 45. Republican candidate Harold Weilbrenner has not submitted a column.