Columns

Back to school time. And for today’s parents, that means facing more choices than a Las Vegas buffet.

I know this menu. My wife and I have loaded up our plates with a sample of everything.

By contrast, I can’t help but think back to how simple things must have been for my parents’ generation. When I went to elementary and intermediate school in the 1970s, my classmates and I walked or rode our bikes to the neighborhood public school.

In my hometown in the farm country of Central California, you might now and then run across a young person who went to private school — usually a Catholic school.

Yet, for the most part, just one generation ago, the public school monopoly was the only game in town.

Today, the world of K-12 education is completely different from what it used to be. Parents have choices, lots of choices.

There are still private schools, but not all of them are parochial. There are also specialized schools for children with learning differences like dyslexia.

For the last 25 years, there have also been charter schools, a kind of hybrid between public-private schools. They get money from the state, so they run on public tax dollars. But they have more autonomy than traditional public schools, which means they can experiment with different types of instruction.

And, in the last two decades, there has been an increase in the number of students who are homeschooled. Since 1993, homeschooling has been legal in all 50 states. Much of the early interest came from Christian fundamentalist parents seeking to shield their children from public school textbooks and curriculum that offended their religious sensibilities.

Nowadays, slightly more than 3 percent of the school-age population is homeschooled. Yet there is still a lot of ignorance about the concept. It does not always mean a student sitting with a parent at the dinner table, with an open textbook. There are homeschool associations, and brick-and-mortar buildings with teachers where students go a few days a week in between home study.

And, I have learned, parents choose homeschooling for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes, it is to avoid bullying or to protect a child who may appear socially awkward. Sometimes, it’s to avoid the constant testing in public schools, or give children more time to pursue sports and other extracurricular activities. Or maybe it’s because parents want students to learn the basics but also have more time for electives like music and debate, which have sometimes been removed from the public-school curriculum.

Likewise, individual states have built reputations for being either a good or bad place to homeschool children; that is, some states make it easy for parents to homeschool their children, others not so much. For states like California, with high per-student expenditures, it’s a good deal financially since parents get to spend on instruction — in their child’s name — roughly a quarter of the funding that would normally go to a public school.

In fact, these days, parents have so many choices that it can be confusing. Every parent wants what is best for his or her child, but it’s hard to know exactly what that is.

As if that were not maddening enough, parents who have more than one child — and who are paying attention — will note that each of them is different. They may have different styles of learning and process information in unique ways.

That’s how it is in our family. So, this year, our educational choices are a smorgasbord.

My children — ages 9, 11, 13 — went to a Montessori charter school from kindergarten to 3rd grade, 5th grade, and 7th grade.

Now my two girls are being homeschooled by my wife — a Montessori-trained educator and licensed language therapist — and the teachers who work at a homeschool charter school. Both my daughters are self-starters with enough discipline to work in their home classroom, neighborhood library, or school classroom.

My son was supposed to be homeschooled, as well. But, at the last minute, he opted for public school. He is now one of about 1,000 pre-teens at his middle school moving between eight periods a day. It seems like a good fit, since he needs rules, deadlines, structure, and set expectations. Public school gives him that.

Competition is a good thing. It’s true in business. And it’s true in education. The public schools in America have run the board for too long, unchallenged. We’ve let bureaucrats, administrators and teachers’ unions create a system of low accountability that exists chiefly for the benefit of adults who work in it.

Many parents are catching on, and voting with their feet by taking their children elsewhere. The market speaks.

You would think that those who, every day, teach lessons would be quicker to learn theirs.

Ruben Navarrette is a contributing editor to Angelus and a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group and a columnist for the Daily Beast. He is a radio host, a frequent guest analyst on cable news, and member of the USA TodayBoard of Contributors and host of the podcast “Navarrette Nation.” Among his books are “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano.” 

SAN DIEGO — It used to be the media would fact-check a story. Now, many people feel they need to fact-check the media.

That’s not a bad idea. In the Trump era, much of the media — a vast landscape of newspapers, broadcast networks, talk radio, news sites, social media and more — didn’t just lose the public’s trust. They threw it out the window. In their zeal to humiliate and run out of office someone who they think should never have been elected, they seem to have decided the end justifies the means.

Even some members of the media admit the profession has lost its way, although they blame external factors beyond their control.

But the media are not victims. Sure, President Donald Trump declared us the “enemy of the people.” Yet other presidents also hated the media, and the media kept its credibility. Not this time. Because much of the media hates this president right back. This seems especially true of the so-called elite media on the East Coast. There are plenty of good reporters and producers at newspapers and television stations around the country who are not plotting to nullify the results of the last election.

Then there are the folks in New York and Washington, some of whom seem to think it is their sacred duty to save the country. When journalists lose sight of their true mission, and take on new responsibilities, bad things happen.

We developed this trust deficit with the public because we climbed into the arena not as referees but as players, ignored the rules we learned as cub reporters, wore our biases on our sleeves, blurred the line between reporting and commentary and took attacks personally while responding in kind.

Recent events have not showered the media in glory. Whether we’re talking about CNN, NBC or The New York Times, the judgment of news agencies is in doubt. Too often, those who are supposed to cover the story have become the story.

When the criticism starts flying, intra-media rivalries take hold. The newspaper people I talk to point to cable television as the problem, while the television folks I know will often single out talk radio. Talk radio blames newspapers. Truth is, we’ve all made mistakes.

Pundits need to stop talking about whether the country could face a constitutional crisis and accept the fact that we’re already living through a communications crisis.

• We live in strange times when The New York Times feels the need to warn its reporters — who are supposed to be objective — not to express opinions in tweets because, in the first year of the administration, there was so much of that going on.
• We live in strange times when national columnists feel comfortable telling people not just to vote in the midterm elections — but to vote for any and all Democrats.
• We live in strange times when The New York Times op-ed page does something rarely done: run an anonymous op-ed eviscerating the White House. This practice was criticized by famed journalist Bob Woodward, who is hardly a defender of the administration. The Times says that its editors are satisfied that the author is trustworthy and “the senior administration official” is well-placed enough to have firsthand information. But how are readers to reach their own conclusions?
• We live in strange times when a former producer at NBC News accuses the network of killing a story on disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein written by Ronan Farrow for reasons that had nothing to do with journalism. Mr. Farrow took the story to The New Yorker and later won the Pulitzer Prize.
• We live in strange times when CNN won’t retract a story about what former Trump attorney Michael Cohen may have said about that infamous meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian attorney at Trump Tower even after its source — Democratic lawyer Lanny Davis — admitted he lied to the network.
• And we live in strange times when NBC’s Chuck Todd, in an essay for The Atlantic, issues an extraordinary call to arms and urges colleagues to combat “the campaign to destroy the legitimacy of the American news media.” Mr. Todd thinks the journalistic creed — “Don’t engage” — is outdated, and he suggests a better course of action is to “showcase and defend our reporting.”

Actually, Chuck, I think the media has done enough showcasing — of our work and ourselves. That’s part of why we’re on the defensive.

Ruben Navarrette is a columnist syndicated by The Washington Post (ruben@rubennavarrette.com).

During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina shared with his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee a message for President Donald Trump: “You do some things that drive me crazy. You do some great things.”

I can relate.

Trump has been driving me crazy since June 2015, when he came down the escalator at Trump Tower, declared his presidential bid, and labeled my Mexican grandfather — who came to this country legally as a boy around 1915 — a rapist, criminal and drug smuggler.

He drove me even crazier when, showing how little he knows about immigration, he said Mexico didn’t send its “best” people. That is all it sends. The only folks who stay behind are the elderly who can’t leave and the entitled who feel they shouldn’t have to.

Nonetheless, I count 20 good things Trump has done in his nearly 20 months in office.

I’d welcome impeachment but fair is fair

I’m surprised the number climbed that high. I’ve been a consistent Never Trumper who hopes the president’s first term is his last. I would even welcome impeachment. Even so, I’m also a journalist trained to look for the truth and share it whether it’s popular or not.

Thus, even as someone who has criticized Trump on issues ranging from trade to immigration to education, it’s only fair to do what much of the news media refuse to do — admit that Trump has done some things right. Such as:

►Move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

►Pull the United States out of the Iranian nuclear deal.

►Stand up to NATO countries for not ponying up enough money to cover the organization’s expenses and their own defense costs.

►Take on the news media and not back down, exposing bias and agenda-driven journalism intended to run him out of office.

►Put an intense focus on immigration, the importance of border security and the cost of illegal immigration, including U.S. citizens killed by the undocumented.

►Target the ruthless Salvadoran street gang MS-13.

►Picking James Mattis as Defense secretary, Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations, John Kelly as White House chief of staff andKellyanne Conway as senior adviser.

►Begin a dialogue with North Korea about ending its nuclear weapons program.

►Focus attention on Rust Belt states and give respect to white working-class voters, overlooked by the elites on both coasts.

►Challenge elitism and question what it means to be “elite.”

►Create millions of new jobs (the White House claims as many as 3 million) and bring unemployment down to 3.9 percent, the lowest since 2000.

►Focus national attention on the opiod crisis, including a look at doctors who overprescribe pain pills.

►Nominate impressive Supreme Court candidates Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

►Propose and help pass a tax cut and cut federal regulations.

►Pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change and defy global warming alarmists.

►Renegotiate unfair trade deals in search of better terms.

►Target racial preferences at colleges and universities, which often hurt intended beneficiaries by lowering standards.

►Refocus immigration debate by ending DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and trying to force Congress to confront the thorny issue of what to do with “Dreamers,” who were brought to the USA illegally when they were kids.

►Shake up both the Republican and Democratic establishments and remain independent from the Washington cartel.

►Make politics more accessible to people who have rarely voted or cared about it, and widen the door of civic engagement.

But Trump embraced ugly demagoguery

Don’t misunderstand. This doesn’t mean I think Trump has been a good president, or that he hasn’t produced more negative than positive. It only means that he did some things right.

Spelling them out reminded me that under different circumstances, I could have voted for Trump for president. I like people who keep their promises, battle elites, and give voice to the overlooked. If only Trump hadn’t embraced an ugly and dangerous form of demagoguery to attack and vilify women, Muslims, Mexicans and others, things might have been different.

You may disagree with every item on that list. What I call a positive, you might consider a negative. Or you might be able to cite two negative items for every positive one.

That’s fine. Make your own list. I’m not looking for agreement, or trying in vain to convince Trump haters. Life is too short for that. I only want to be fair, not just to the president but to those voters — my fellow Americans — who gave him the job.

Ruben Navarrette Jr., a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group and host of a daily podcast, “Navarrette Nation.” Follow him on Twitter: @RubenNavarrette.

Before we rush off to work, let’s pause for a moment and think about how much some Americans earn per hour.

In a recent Labor Day column about the declining American work ethic, I wrote: “Today, in the agricultural hub of Central California, farmers tell me they’re paying $30 per hour to pick tomatoes and $40 per hour to pick melons. On the coast, they’re paying $60 per hour to pick avocados. They still can’t find enough workers.”

Who knew this could be so controversial? You wouldn’t believe the pushback I’ve gotten in the last few days. There were many skeptics who doubted that wages were that high in agriculture.

They are. I’ve interviewed farmers and farmworkers, and both groups confirm it. Also, there have been articles about how tough it is for farmers and ranchers to find laborers, and how they’ve had to increase wages to avoid losing the ones they already have.

Still, labor advocates had such a low opinion of growers that they doubted farmworkers were so well-paid. Others had such a low opinion of immigrants, who make up the vast majority of the workforce in agriculture, that they doubted the laborers deserved such wages.

So how much is someone’s time worth? The short answer: Whatever someone else is willing to pay for it.

Fine. But that rule suddenly doesn’t apply to farmworkers? Why not? What ugly vein of elitism did we just tap into?

Let’s start in the basement. The federal minimum wage is a mere $7.25 per hour. But 29 states and the District of Columbia have higher minimum wages.

In California, the state minimum wage will — on Jan. 1, 2019 — go up to $12 per hour. Individual cities can set higher amounts; on July 1, 2019, the minimum wage will go up to $14.25 per hour in Los Angeles and already is $15 per hour in San Francisco.

Yet the market makes its own rules. Fast-food restaurants in this state can’t find workers. Apparently, not a lot of young people want to flip burgers anymore. Employers are now offering $13 to $16 per hour.

It’s our own fault. We could have seen this coming. Americans have devalued work over the years to the point where many young people now consider it a waste of time.

At construction firms, dairy farms and landscape companies, the workforce is getting older. And when those elderly workers retire, not many young people are lining up to take their place.

What intrigues me most are those Americans who demand a pretty penny for their time. Not experience or expertise. Just time.

Do you have any idea what babysitters charge these days? A few years ago, my wife and I would get quoted $12 to $15 per hour — or more if the babysitter had to watch more than one child.

Not long ago, we bought meals from a woman who did a brisk business cooking food for working families. A salmon dinner for four might cost $60. She charged not just for the food and cooking skill — but for her time as well.

That’s key. Americans value their time immensely, and they expect you to value it, too.

About 10 years ago, here in Southern California, I needed a fence stained. A handyman, who happened to be a naturalized U.S. citizen from Europe, offered to do it — for $75 per hour.

Need your car repaired? Take it to the dealer, and you’ll pay at least $95 per hour in labor costs.

The other day, I called a plumber to unclog a drain. It took him about 25 minutes to get his equipment in place, and five minutes to pop the drain. Those 30 minutes cost me $125.

Mesmerized by Meghan McCain’s tearful sendoff on Saturday for her father, Senator John McCain, I spent the rest of the weekend thinking about eulogies.

I wondered: What makes a good eulogy? What purpose do they serve? Are they for the dead — or the living?

On a personal note, I wondered: What kind of job have I done the half dozen times I’ve stepped up to eulogize loved ones? Did I manage to do justice to the legacy of those who meant so much to me, as I tried to summarize an entire life in just a few minutes? And, one day, what kind of eulogy would I like friends and family members to deliver on my behalf?

Most of all: How do I want my kids to sum up my time on Earth? When my time comes, will my kids know me well enough to tell the world who I was, what I stood for, what values I held dear, what principles I cherished and how I tried to live my life? Will they be able to say what defined me, set me apart, and made up what my own father refers to as a person’s “core?”

I’ve thought about eulogies before. I’ve contemplated how there are — as New York Times Columnist David Brooks puts it — “resume virtues” and “eulogy virtues.”

The last time I thought about these things was in May, when 92-year-old former First Lady Barbara Bush — a beloved public figure if ever there was one — went to be with the Lord after a life lived gracefully. Bush said that her life’s greatest legacy was “the children and the grandchildren.”

When my day arrives, I hope that at least one of my kids steps up to bid me fond adieu. Or, in my family, a hearty “adios”.

To prepare, I hope they recall Meghan McCain’s tribute to her dad, which was really one of the most beautiful sendoffs we’ve ever seen. It’s the new gold standard for public figure eulogies.

What made Meghan McCain’s words so powerful, and so memorable, was that they gave us a peek into one of the most important of the senator’s roles: that of father. Those were words written by a daughter about her father — a father that she, perhaps reluctantly, shared with the world. That was a part of John McCain that was known to only seven people — his sons and daughters.

Days later, a daughter’s words still rattle around in my head and bring tears to my eyes:

“My father is gone. John Sidney McCain III was many things. He was a sailor, he was an aviator, he was a husband, he was a warrior, he was a prisoner, he was a hero, he was a congressman, he was a senator, he was a nominee for President of the United States. These are all of the titles and roles of a life that’s been well lived. They’re not the greatest of his titles nor the most important of his roles. … My father was a great man. He was a great warrior. He was a great American. I admired him for all of these things. But I love him because he was a great father.”

 Life gets complicated. Relationships get frayed over time. Those who once thought you hung the moon eventually see your flaws.

But to have even one of your children say such things about you at the end of your days is an incredible honor.

Meghan remembered her father “kissing the hurt when I fell and skinned my knee,” and making her get back on a horse after a broken collarbone. “Nothing is going to break you,” McCain told his little girl. Obviously, listening to her, nothing has.

I remember when my 13-year-old daughter, Jacqui — named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who noted, if you mess up the raising of your kids, nothing else you accomplish in life matters — was just starting preschool. One day, I was juggling the demands of family and work, and probably falling short on both counts. But perhaps my little girl could see I was trying. She grabbed my arm, looked me in the eye, and said: “You’re a good daddy.”

I’ve had a good life, with my share of accomplishments and accolades. But, at that moment, I was three feet off the ground.

Given an extraordinary life lived well, John McCain has much to be proud of. In good days, and through hard times, he had an intimate relationship with something he cared a lot about: the concept of honor. And as he went to his rest, he was showered with the love and respect of a grateful nation.

Still, as the maverick looked down from heaven upon his grand sendoff, what should have given him the most satisfaction were the loving words of a grateful daughter.

Ruben Navarrette is a contributing editor to Angelus and a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group and a columnist for the Daily Beast. He is a radio host, a frequent guest analyst on cable news, and member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and host of the podcast “Navarrette Nation.” Among his books are “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano.”

For many Americans, the killing of Mollie Tibbetts is all the more tragic because the person who confessed to murdering the 20-year-old University of Iowa student—Cristhian Bathena Rivera—appears to be an undocumented immigrant from Mexico.

Some say that if Rivera hadn’t been in the country, Tibbetts would be alive today.

Tibbetts might also be alive today if she hadn’t gone jogging alone in Brooklyn, Iowa, on July 18, or if Rivera hadn’t found work at a nearby dairy and had moved to another state.

If you’re worried that every one of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States threatens public safety, I have a tip.

Today, on Labor Day, do a little extra work, break a sweat, and wean yourself, your friends, and your family off undocumented immigrant labor. Do your own chores, cook your own food, tend to your own kids, clean your own house—and milk your own cows.

Americans who want less immigration—legal and illegal—always portray immigrants as deviant and dangerous. The same line was used against the Germans, Irish, Italians, Jews, etc.

But in 30 years of covering the immigration debate, here’s what I have never understood: If Americans are so terrified of undocumented immigrants, why are we so quick to bring them into our lives? We give them the security codes to our gated communities so they can cut our lawn, leave them alone in our homes so they can clean our toilets, and hand them our babies so we can get to yoga.

Shouldn’t we all be more careful? If they’re going to cook our food in restaurants, shouldn’t we have tasters?

One person who refuses to buy into the familiar anti-immigrant hysteria is Mollie’s father. And, according to The Des Moines Register, Rob Tibbetts told mourners at his daughter’s funeral that he felt embraced by the Latino immigrant community during the several weeks that he was in Brooklyn to help search for Mollie.