A teachable moment

 I have seen some stuff, here in my advanced years. It happens whether you want it to or not.

And so I remember Disco Demolition Night in Chicago, and Ten-Cent Beer Night in Cleveland.

And I remember the night the Fort Wayne Komets handed out ice scrapers, which became projectiles for disgruntled fans not long after.

And I remember various and sundry other sports promotions that were so ill-conceived you wondered in what bar they were conceived, and how late the hour was, and how many drinks in the conceivers were.

Rarely, however, have I seen a promotion more tone-deaf than the one the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Stampede decided to put on not long ago.

The Stampede, a junior hockey team, decided it would be a swell way to support local teachers by conducting a Dash For Cash between periods. The team would dump $5,000 in $1 bills on a carpet on the ice, and 10 teachers would scramble around on their hands and knees to see how many dollar bills they could scoop up in a certain time period.

I can't imagine a more demeaning spectacle than grown men and women, educators all, groveling for dollar bills while spectators cheer them on. 

I also can't imagine a better metaphor for American public education, which has been slowly sucked dry of resources by knuckleheaded politicians, sham charter schools and various other leeches.

It's left teachers like those in Sioux Falls the other night figuratively, if not actually, groveling for money, including paying for classroom necessities out of their own pockets. It's an utter disgrace in a nation that seems to have billions, if not trillions, to spend on everything else under the sun.

What's the old saying? Trillions for defense, not one cent for a goddamn piece of chalk?

Excuse the language. But I come from a family of public-school educators, and all of this makes me see red.

Now, you might be asking yourself why the teachers in Sioux Falls would voluntarily subject themselves to such an obviously humiliating exercise. And in truth, I can't imagine any of the educators in my family doing so. I'm guessing they'd have told the Stampede to go whiz up a rope, that it was degrading and the team should be ashamed of itself.

And yet.

And yet, I can see how this was sold to the teachers -- Money for your kids! Come on, it'll be fun! -- and how the Stampede no doubt saw the whole thing. It almost certainly was not the team's intention to mock the teachers or their plight. Team officials likely really did see it as a way to help them out.

I imagine halfway through the promotion, they were thinking more along of the lines of, Uh-oh. This looks really bad.

And so the Stampede has since apologized, and offered each of the 10 teachers an additional $500. Which only makes South Dakota look bad for needing a hockey team to subsidize public education there.

That's an indictment that needs to stick. And if it shames the South Dakota lege into investing more in public education ...

Well. Maybe that promotion will not have been so tone-deaf after all.