A Successful Society Honors Its Teachers
“If a seed of lettuce will not grow, we do not blame the lettuce. Instead, the fault lies with us for not having nourished the seed properly.” – Buddhist proverb.
The subject of education is difficult to approach. We know there is much that is wrong with our present educational system, but there is no consensus about what the problems are. To make matters worse, there are people out there who really do not want to improve education.
Some of those people are parents. Among them are those who cannot find the time to care about their children, for whatever reason, but many are people who didn’t get much out of school themselves. Our educational system failed them, and they expect it to fail their children.
As I see it, they send their children to school wearing the dunce caps they once wore.
It has been shown many times that lack of education leads to lack of income. Lack of income forces people to live in substandard housing, which is usually clustered with other substandard housing. Schools in such areas do not perform well compared with schools in more affluent areas.
And that is the primary problem (there are many others) with the concept of “No Child Left Behind.” This act of Congress, signed by President George Bush, Jr. less than four months after the 9-11 tragedy, penalizes poorly-performing schools without regard to the obvious connection between lack of education and lack of income and parental support.
NCLB makes the assumption that teachers are at fault. We’ve all had poor ones, and it would be nice to be able to weed them out, but teachers cannot be evaluated only by how well their students perform. Other factors must be considered.
Some parents are a problem, mostly because of their lack of support, but there are forces out there with a more diabolical agenda.
Teachers have been assailed on another front recently. Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin
That isn’t true. If we truly valued our children’s education we would pay teachers a lot more. As it is, we place a higher value, in dollars at least, on celebrity blowhards like Donald Trump and Charlie Sheen; on stockbrokers and basketball players and fashion designers and corporate raiders and all those who accumulate wealth, even if they do so by impoverishing others.
A society that doesn’t value its teachers is not likely to have very well-educated children. An educated person doesn’t just know facts, or where to find them. He or she knows how the world works, questions authority, is tolerant of those who are different, and is skeptical of simple answers to complex problems.
Such a person is not easily misled, and is considered dangerous by those who seek to mislead. That is another group that wants our educational system – at least our public educational system – to fail.
Yes, I am saying that there are people committed to “dumbing down” our citizens, and they are succeeding wildly.
Teachers and their bloated salaries caused the recession. We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. Barak Obama is a Kenyan Muslim communist. The universe is only 7,000 years old. Tax cuts for the rich will trickle down to the rest of us. We have the best health care in the world. Global warming is a hoax. We wouldn’t have found bin Laden without torture. Drill, baby, drill. Government isn’t the solution; government is the problem.
Well-educated people don’t accept such statements without question. They’re not likely to keep the dial turned to Faux News. They’re dangerous.
Well, I say be dangerous! Encourage your children, and your friends’ children, to learn, and explore, and doubt! Question authority! Speak truth to power! Value those who teach!
And never stop learning. If we all keep learning, those who seek to mislead will lose this perilous game.
Let’s not be stupid enough to accept being dumb.
1 comment:
You're right, teachers aren't the reason public education is failing our kids. It's the teachers unions bleeding the money out of schools and into retirement and pension funds that killing it. Look at California. 53% of the state budget goes to schools. But out of every dollar only .48 cents make it the classroom. Where's the other .52 cents? It's going into the retirement accounts of high up union leaders and gold ated health care and pensions for all teachers. Teachers are retireing make 102% of what they made when they were working. Tell me how are we supposed to teach our kids when more than 1/2 the money goes to people that have retired huh?
Don't give me this crap talk about teachers not making enough money, their retirement benefits are better than most private sector middle class.
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