To Everything, Turn Turn Turn

So for the past ten years or so in Iowa there's been this song and dance ever since the governor put his foot down and told the school districts that they were not allowed to have the start of school until after the end of the state fair. Like most school districts, they had been moving the start of school up by a week every year or two for a long time, and it had, for a long time, started during and even sometimes before the state fair.

Now Iowa is obviously made up mostly of farming communities, and the state fair is The annual event, especially for kids on small, family run farms, who are learning how to run the farm, and things like livestock handling and the like. These things are not taught in school. There are some college courses you can take about it, but the vast majority of the next generation to own small farms are learning how to run them on farms belonging to their parents or friends. And for these kids, the state fair is like graduation. It's essential for them to be there, to show their proficiency in different fields, make connections with their peers and in the various industries they will need to work with, and to take advantage of workshops and resources that are only available once a year during the state fair. (Also, the state fair is just a massive part of the culture here and kids should be allowed to attend and be a part of it, even if they don't plan on going into farming.)

With school starting during or before the state fair, this was obviously a problem. Kids were forced to choose between the first weeks of school and the state fair. If they chose school, they lost out on essential education and name-taking that would pave the road for them further down the line if they chose to go into farming. If they picked the state fair, it put their general education at risk, and there's not a lot of forgiveness going around for kids who miss the first week of school.

The governor told the school districts that they weren't allowed to force kids to choose anymore. The state fair has been at the same time every year for a hundred years, that's their cutoff point for how early school can start. This means school can start on the last week of August, which is more than reasonable IMO. (Edit: I went back and googled it and the exact cutoff date is the 23rd of August. This was signed into law last year -- I'm not sure if there was a specific date prior to that or if the actual law is new.)

This worked for a couple of years, and then the school district tried to move the first week of school up again and were firmly told no. And ever since that's happened every few years.

Now I believe this is happening in more places than just Iowa, but it was called out and stopped in Iowa because of the strong cultural weight of farming here. It goes unnoticed in most other places because it's just not as important culturally.

And it's important because pushing school back to before these essential farming events is pushing future generations out of small farming. I.E. when the people who currently own small farms die or become too old to run the farm anymore, they won't be able to pass it on to younger relatives or friends, because those people won't have the skillset to actually operate the farm. They'll end up having to sell their land to -- mostly Google and Facebook, who loooooove to buy up farmland around here to build datacenters, but also to larger corporate farms, who are going to do everything more shittily and less ethically.

The French: this freak is incredible, give him all the money

The Americans: fucking fabulous, here have a promotion

Title: Pine Trees at Sunset (aka Pine with Female Figure in the Sunset) Artist: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch [active in France], 1853-1890) Date: 1889 Genre: landscape Movement: Post-Impressionism Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 92 cm (36.2 in) high x 73 cm (28.7 in) wide Location: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands