The Dust Bowl - History Repeating...

   I've read several books about the "Dust Bowl" in Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, but none has been so poignant for me as The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. The Dust Bowl has been called "the greatest man-made ecological disaster" the world has ever known. While I didn't know about the Dust Bowl first-hand, I heard about it from my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts - and the hardships caused. They were confirmed in Egan's book.
   In November, 1933, my grandfather - Virgil Beckham, had purchased a mule at a farm sale near Foss, Oklahoma. The date was at the height of the Dust Bowl, and many farmers and ranchers were being forced to sell out to the corporate farmers from the east, known as "suitcase farmers". They were dubbed suitcase farmers, because they arrived and unpacked their suitcases in hotel rooms, from where they leased or bought every square inch of Oklahoma topsoil, had it plowed up, and ordered wheat to be planted. My grandfather tied the mule's lead rope to the back of his friend's horse-drawn wagon - and they began the journey home. As they reached the point to part ways (about 2 miles from home), Virgil untied the mule from the wagon and proceeded to lead the mule on foot for the rest of the trek. No one really knows what happened next, but an eleven year old boy on his way home from school on horseback, related the following: "As I rode home from school that day, I saw a mule in the distance, which appeared to have its lead rope tied to an oak stump. It was standing still, and as I rode closer - I recognized what appeared to be a dead man, with his arm entangled in the lead rope. It scared me, so I rode as fast as I could to the nearest neighbor for help."
   I published another article about this incident several years ago, and shortly thereafter an older gentleman contacted me concerning the accident. He told me that he was the boy who discovered the lifeless body of my grandfather so long ago. It was now 2012, but he related the details of Virgil's death like it only happened yesterday (even though it happened 79 years ago). He was 90 when I spoke to him.
   Virgil had a wife (my grandmother) and seven children, one of which was my father - Johnny. For my family in 1933, it truly was the worst hard time.
   Suitcase farmers arrived in Oklahoma sometime during the late 1920s, armed with generous federal incentives - according to Timothy Egan. They swooped in by the dozens because $millions could be made from planting and harvesting wheat, or so they thought. They ran the small, local farmers and ranchers, such as Virgil Beckham, out of business - in the name of competition. Combined with the suitcase farmers' abuse of our Oklahoma topsoil (the prairie was never meant to be plowed up for corporate profits), the hot and dry weather conditions devastated parts of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. Soon after arriving on the scene during the late '20s, they harvested millions of bushels of wheat at a price of more than one dollar per bushel. Many suitcase farmers became millionaires quickly, but soon the price of wheat plummeted to less than 10 cents per bushel - so the corporate suitcasers immediately abandoned western Oklahoma, and went on to the next "get rich quick" scheme. Oklahoma was left with millions of bushels of wheat rotting in the northwest, dust, disease, and even death... all because of corporate millionaires and corporate welfare.
   While it may be overstating to analogize the Dust Bowl of the 1920s and 1930s to any present conditions, the rise of corporate public education certainly is similar to the rise of corporate farming.
Starting in 2011, suitcase educators began arriving in Oklahoma. These corporate education firms believed $millions in Oklahoma tax dollars could make millionaires (and it already has). After all, won't competition with Oklahoma Public Schools make all public schools better? Just like the competition between suitcase farmers and small, local farmers didn't make farming more profitable almost a century ago, the suitcase educators will become millionaires at tax payer expense - and then abandon Oklahoma. We are already beginning to see the devastation in their atrocious graduation rates of between twenty and forty percent (traditional public schools average about 85%), their failing school report cards, and high drop-out rates. Just as the suitcase farmers gave away Oklahoma topsoil (one U.S. Congressman, when discussing the Dust Bowl in Washington D.C. at the time, noted "there goes Oklahoma" as a huge red dust cloud billowed out over the Pacific Ocean), the suitcase educators of Epic and other virtual charter schools will devastate Oklahoma traditional public schools.
   Oklahomans must learn from history, and not repeat the failures of the past, for if we cannot or will not learn from past mistakes - public education may be doomed...