By Kristin
Sound Transit is considering providing curriculum to K-12 classrooms in an effort to create more riders for their "$2.6 billion Central Link light-rail line that opened in 2009 between Seattle's Westlake Center and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport," according to the Seattle Times.
I am hugely in favor of mass transit, except when I'm in favor of bikes. I think people should use cars for long, rare trips – to see Grandma and Poppa Duane in Omaha while also learning about the Oregon Trail, for example, or perhaps for touring wine country. If one can piggy back on the other, hey, that's efficient driving!
And I support Sound Transit. I'd like to see the Puget Sound region continue to develop mass transit routes. But I'd like to see them develop routes people use. How many people want to go from Westlake Center to SeaTac? Not enough, apparently. Perhaps running a line that people really used would have been the smarter option, but Washington tends to vote dumb when it comes to mass transit, and we end up with tiny streetcar lines that quaintly carry you a block or two, and train lines that go from the mall to the airport.
Sound Transit's idea to develop curriculum that will get "into kids' consciousness and make them more likely to be future transit riders," according to the staffer leading the effort, aren't okay with me. I'd much rather they put taxpayer money into developing curriculum that creates voters who can see past the next year or two, so that we end up with a transit system that does more than get you to the airport the two times a year you need to make that trip.
Class time is pretty valuable. Kids lose it for vision, scoliosis, hearing, testing, assemblies, fundraisers, and all the other nuts and bolts of a public institution. Given that we cannot assume families are educating their children, or are able to assist in the education of their children, I'm pretty adamant that class time not become a route for free marketing.
I'm sure the Sound Transit materials will be available on a teacher-choice option, and I definitely won't be choosing to use them, but I'm unhappy that a publicly-funded company would consider advertising to public school students. Public schools are not an affordable, conveniently-efficient marketing opportunity. They're being told they have to be many things – therapists, health centers, parents, an end to hunger, babysitters – and all of that on top of educating, but they shouldn't also be asked to be free advertising.
Whats wrong with marketing to them? I really don’t see the issue here. You market to your demographic, and if they happen to fit that, there’s nothing wrong with it. Its not being forced on them, and they can make their own choices. Just because they have a lot of potential burdens doesn’t mean they should be off limits.
I totally see your point, Kristin. I’m also very protective of instructional time.
On the other hand, I’ve frequently had “Oxy Gene” come into my room to teach his lesson on riding Sound Transit buses. He makes a couple of key points, notably that you can’t expect cars to stop for public buses like they’re supposed to do with school buses. He takes the class for a ride on the public bus, showing them how to signal the driver and what the bus stops look like. He also gives the teachers enough tokens to take the class on a public-bus field trip on another day.
All in all, it’s a pretty positive experience. It takes away from class time, but since third graders are supposed to be learning about “the community” in social studies, I don’t really see it that way.
It does look like Sound Transit it taking it up a notch, though, in this new initiative, and to the extent that it doesn’t support the real mission of public schools, that’s a bad thing.