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I am not against education. I am against what it has become.
In Centralia, we are feeding a system that no longer promotes individuals, growth or real preparation for life. We keep approving levies and funneling money into an institution that favors sports programs over essential skills, treats symptoms instead of causes, and has forgotten its purpose entirely.
Why did we stop teaching home economics? Ethics? Personal finance? Conflict resolution? These weren’t fluff — they were the tools of life. We used to graduate students who could navigate the world. Now we graduate test-takers who’ve never balanced a budget or cooked a meal.
We don’t prepare them for adulthood — we warehouse them in a system that rewards conformity over capability.
And what’s worse: in a time when students need real help sorting through identity, anxiety, depression and confusion, we offer them blanket labels instead of meaningful support.
Telling every confused, struggling teen that they simply “must be transgender” is not compassion. It’s lazy institutional avoidance. It’s easier for the system to apply a label than to explore the complexity of the individual beneath it.
This isn’t education — it’s evasion. It’s an identity crisis being managed by a system with no identity of its own. Centralia’s graduation rate lingers at 62%. And yet, levy after levy, we keep handing over our money to a machine that doesn’t change. Why? Because tradition says we’re supposed to support the schools? Because challenging it might make us look heartless?
I say it’s heartless to ignore that we’re failing students, failing families and setting an entire generation up for confusion and dependency.
This is a call not to abandon education — but to finally demand that it evolve.
Jason Pickett
Centralia
