Smith: When we overreach

If athletes such as these professional triathletes move beyond a traditional stair-step approach to strength and endurance conditioning, they can overreach and injure themselves.
If athletes such as these professional triathletes move beyond a traditional stair-step approach to strength and endurance conditioning, they can overreach and injure themselves.

Overreaching. Merriam-Webster gives a simple definition of the term: to defeat oneself by seeking to do or gain too much.

Overreach occurs in business when a company exceeds its core mission and operates beyond its competencies, and fails. Overreach in sports impairs and impedes an athlete's performance and health when he or she moves beyond a traditional stair-step approach to strength and endurance conditioning.

photo Robin Smith

Simply, it's going too far.

In politics and government, the public witnesses overreach a bit too regularly. When policies are put into place that essentially marginalize the masses, you see overreach. In Chattanooga, using transportation funding to build bicycle lanes is considered overreach by many. Demanding that the small minority of individuals who choose to be fluid in their gender identity must be accommodated by changing bathroom and locker room laws in public facilities is overreach. Prioritizing the rights and well-being of those intentionally ignoring immigration laws in our nation over law-abiding citizens is overreach, as evidenced by the adoption of sanctuary state policies in many communities in California.

Recently, efforts to improve our critical public schools became mired in overreach when terms to marginalize were employed.

Let's agree on a few facts: Communities thrive with educated citizens. Citizens are well-served when the value of learning is embraced, honored and role-modeled. Educated and trained individuals have greater opportunities based on their level of preparedness and mastery of core subject matter. In Hamilton County, we need and benefit from good schools because of the opportunities a good education offers our children.

Now, conflict arises in how best to accomplish this preparedness. A school system is only as valuable as the results it provides. What are the desired results? They are that students develop an ability to think critically, analyze, read, write, and apply principles of math, facts of history and the foundations of science to be self-reliant and to operate in a chosen profession and in our great community. So, in this effort, the focus always must remain on educating students.

But, when process transcends product in importance, the debate usually becomes either personal or political in the battle for control of the process. And if the merits of an argument are exhausted, ugliness ensues.

The dust-up between UnifiEd, its newly formed political action committee that runs parallel to its educational nonprofit, and several local politicians who did or didn't receive an endorsement or are opposed by recruited candidates, is rooted in a bit of overreach.

Employing as the basis of a strategy a racially charged term such as "integration," as it involves existing social or financial services, does not serve the stated or pretense of purpose of addressing student needs. Instead, supporting some candidates over others on their support of the "integration of schools" conjures up a racial conflict that should not exist in working toward producing educated and prepared children.

If the goal is to produce educated students, then say it. But to frame a political construct that assigns the label of "racists" to those who don't toe your line doesn't accomplish the needed goal; instead, it overreaches and marginalizes. The tactic accomplishes nothing good ... and it's getting old.

Robin Smith, a former chairwoman of the Tennessee Republican Party, owns Rivers Edge Alliance.

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