Steve Wiegand: Politicos in harmony on tech ed

So, a Republican and a Democrat walk into a high school gym Tuesday and participate in a civil discussion that centers on their mutual affection for a good idea.

That's it. No punchline. A minor miracle, maybe, but no joke.

The gym was at Central Valley High School in Ceres, which, as Valley aficionados are aware, is just south of Modesto, north of Keyes and west of Hughson.

The Republican was state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater. Denham is a 40-year-old almond farmer who also runs a company that supplies reusable plastic containers for agriculture. He's one of those relatively rare Republican politicians who believes there is value in educating other people's children.

The Democrat was state schools chief Jack O'Connell. O'Connell is a 56-year-old former teacher who spent 20 years in the Legislature before becoming schools chief. He's one of those relatively rare Democratic politicians who doesn't believe the solution to everything is spending other people's money.

The occasion was a forum put together by Denham to discuss career technical education (CTE) programs and their future in the Valley and statewide.

In the olden days, career tech was called vocational tech. Basically, "smart kids" took college prep courses and "dumb kids" took auto shop. (Of course it sometimes turned out that the "smart kids" ended up as wage slaves at a newspaper while "dumb kids" ended up owning a half-dozen car dealerships.)

Nowadays, however, career tech isn't an either-or proposition. The idea is to give kids an academic education with an emphasis in a field that interests them.

For example, a kid could take drafting courses as electives. If he chose to pass on college, he would have a head start on getting a job as a draftsman. If he's college-bound, he has a head start on maybe becoming a civil engineer or architect.

A lot of people like this idea. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, often points to his Austrian high school career tech sales training as a key reason for his success. He likes it so much, in fact, that he put $52 million in the current state budget for it, along with $100 million for building career tech facilities at high schools and community colleges.

Most of the Ceres audience of about 200 seemed to like the idea, although one 10th-grader was a bit dubious, and wanted to know if the state was thinking of making post-high school education mandatory.

But the most striking thing about the event was that Denham and O'Connell both appeared to be more interested in finding commonality than in scoring points with the audience.

Rather than just churn out the knee-jerk partisan rhetoric that poisons so much of the discourse in Sacramento, Denham and O'Connell went out of their way to stress similarities in their backgrounds and perspectives.

Both are the first members of their families to go to college. (O'Connell said that when he called home to say he had made the dean's list, his dad told him to apologize to the dean and promise not to do it again.)

Both are ardent supporters of career tech, but neither likes the idea of making CTE courses mandatory for high school students, since many schools don't have the facilities to offer enough courses, and either some other current requirement would have to be dropped or the school day would have to be made longer.

When the two-hour event was over, the two politicos shook some hands, posed for some pictures and headed out, eventually to wind up back in Sacramento.

With any luck, they'll bring some Ceres civility with them -- and a little of it will rub off.

About the writer:

• Reach Steve Wiegand at (916) 321-1076 or swiegand@sacbee.com. Back columns at www.sacbee.com/ wiegand.