Here’s hope for a smarter future for Nevada

By Brian Greenspun (contact)

Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Is anyone in Nevada smarter than a fifth grader?

The Las Vegas Sun’s Emily Richmond did a Nevada Day story by interviewing people waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. (All kinds of DMV jokes come to mind, but they will have to wait because there isn’t much funny about Emily’s reporting.)

Her lead subject was Katharine Conti, an 18-year-old UNLV student who was proud to say that when she was in fifth grade — having been in Nevada just one month — she impressed her teacher and others because she knew all the words to the Nevada state song. And she knew the name, “Home Means Nevada.”

Unfortunately for Katharine, her love of learning, at least the trivia concerning her adopted state, has been relegated to that part of her brain in which retrieval is more difficult. Katharine can be forgiven.

Teenagers’ brains go fuzzy for some reason for a few years but they do come back and there is every reason to believe that Katharine’s academic pursuits and determination will be well-served in later years, especially as she pursues her computer engineering degree. In fact, if she becomes the next software guru, she will be forgiven any number of memory lapses.

The important part of this story is that Katharine was a fifth grader when she realized it was important to become rooted in her newly adopted state. I have every reason to believe that other fifth graders in the Clark County School District are similarly grounded in all things Nevada. That’s what fifth graders do!

This month the Las Vegas Sun Youth Forum will bring 1,000 of the best and brightest high school students together at the Convention Center to discuss Nevada and other topics on peoples’ minds. They will do it in a setting where what they have to say is more important than what the adults in the community who think they know all the answers have to say. And we celebrate that fact.

For those of us fortunate enough to be part of the Youth Forum, we realize that fifth graders like Katharine do grow up to become very intelligent, knowledgeable, curious and outspoken members of this community. And they care a great deal about what is happening in their schools, cities and state.

In years past, we found that most students would just parrot what they heard at home from their parents. That no longer seems to be the case. These young people see what we (adults) have done wrong, how we have allowed ourselves the ignorance of our convictions, and why we continue to allow a polarization to occur that paralyzes all good thought and action on behalf of the citizens.

Yes, these kids see all that and, if recent history is any guide, the newest participants in the Youth Forum will express the same beliefs.

But, I digress.

As I listen to and watch the debates that occur constantly across this state — do we need water in the South; do we need a tax structure that doesn’t produce massive cuts to critical needs at the most inopportune times; should we encourage renewable energy investments (which mean high-paying and sustainable jobs into the future) or choose instead to not spend tax money necessary to attract those industries; do we choose ideology over pragmatism and, by doing so, limit what should be a limitless future? — I can’t help but wonder what kind of decisions the fifth graders of Nevada would make if given the chance to speak out.

What I do know is that they would be derived from the innocence of young minds that just want to learn about their state, that understand the songs that give us meaning and root us in this place called Nevada, and that allow for as much sanity and responsibility as 10-year-old minds can comprehend.

And therein lies the problem. Because fifth graders — at least most of them — don’t yet have the capacity or the wisdom to deal with today’s adult challenges, the task of making such decisions is left to the adults. No, not even the brilliant minds who come to the Youth Forum each year have a shot at making those calls, although they are getting closer.

Instead, the adults in our society — the ones with the prejudices, the biases, the minds closed to ideas dissimilar to their own, those who have allowed themselves to be polarized by the screaming and yelling of the cable airwaves that someone once said are full of sound and fury but which signify nothing — will get to make the call.

That’s where we find ourselves. The reason we are in the mess we are in, ultimately, is that we have removed ourselves from proper debate, reasonable argument and an understanding that there are ideas different from and better than our own.

We would be far better off learning “Homes Means Nevada,” understanding its words and committing ourselves to its future — the way Katharine did when she became a Nevadan at age 10.

I know it is a stretch, but it would behoove us all to try to be as smart as a fifth grader. Let’s start there.

Brian Greenspun is editor of the Las Vegas Sun.