Everything else is less important

Nothing is more important than our children.

They are the future, so providing for them strengthens us all and the society in which they live, in which we all live, inseparable, whether we acknowledge it or not.

That’s why the top story this week is about a good program at Nespelem’s school, which has seen a decline in student behavior over several decades. If the PAX program is successful, it could reverse that decline, leading to better lives for all the community’s children, in both the Nespelem and Grand Coulee Dam school districts.

Teachers know all too well what most of us, with our coddled upbringings, cannot imagine: it doesn’t take half a classroom of ill-mannered kids to destroy learning; it only takes one. And when a community struggles, its children suffer poverty, and some suffer emotional trauma. They bring it with them to school, unprepared for dealing with it or any other stress. Education suffers. All the children suffer. This is the real reason behind our nation’s supposedly ailing educational system that the country keeps trying to fix, screwing it up even more.

If the PAX program works, kids will have behavioral tools they wouldn’t have had, ensuring a much higher rate of success all through their lives.

Let’s hope it succeeds and spreads to every school that needs it.

Nothing could be more important.

Scott Hunter

editor and publisher