Dear People of America,
I’m just curious as to how you could ever think that teachers don’t deserve more money, or how you could ever say that teachers should take a pay cut instead of millionaires paying an extra three percent in taxes.
What is the foundation of any good society? It’s a simple answer really: the society’s youth. Who educates the youth and teaches them right from wrong, life skills, etc. well parents, grandparents, and other family members, but most importantly teachers do this. Teachers spend eight hours a day, five days a week with your children; Teachers can make a huge impact in that time. In a world where as a country we are in constant competition with other countries to have the best education system and the truth is we’re falling short. According to NPR, even in just the past few years, U.S. rankings in education have dropped. In mathematics, the U.S was beaten by 29 other jurisdictions, which was a six spot drop from the last measurement, and in scores in Science, the U.S. was beaten by 18 other jurisdictions, which was a two-point drop from measurements taken in 2009, and in reading the U.S. was beaten by 19 other jurisdictions, which was a ten point drop from 2009.
That means that in at least three subject areas, our rankings have gotten significantly worse, and we are no longer even close to being within the top 10 rankings. Why is this? Obviously, no one has all the answers, but we could make a guess. As a country, we spend significantly less on education than many other parts of the budget that could be seen as unnecessary or excessive. No matter what public school you go to, whether it is in an affluent neighborhood, or an area with a low socio-economic status I guarantee there is at least one (but probably many more) textbooks that need replacing, broken tools in the classroom or on the building itself, oh and let’s not forget the underpaid teachers, and how much it costs to run a copy machine with a weeks worth of worksheets and activities for even one classroom of 30 students.
You’re in college, why care about what’s happening in public schools? You aren’t an education major, so why bother? Chances are you someday will be a parent, or an aunt/uncle, a godparent, etc. Chances are you will care about the outcome of a specific child, and you probably care about what the world will look like in about 20 years, and that lies in the hands of children that are learning in our schools right this second. Drive past a public school at five in the afternoon, or on the weekends, and you will see a handful of cars in the parking lot. Those are the teachers that have come in on their own time, without pay, to improve the life of someone else’s child and to improve the lives of the next generation.
You can’t complain about our failing education system until you give it the proper funding it needs. Our schools shouldn’t be falling apart while we focus on how big the Powerball Jackpot is or who won the Super Bowl. Not only do we underpay our teachers, but we also have people that make the rules and standards like the ISATs (all you millennials probably remember those), and MAP testing not only take up classroom time that could be used for further instruction, but the vast majority of these tests and standards where created who people who aren’t teachers, and some of them have never even set foot in a classroom before.
It’s about time that the millennials stand together to make a change. No child left behind was a failure, and the common core standards aren’t doing much better. Sooner or later we need to make a monetary and a mental investment into the education of the next generation if we want any chance of our rankings improving. So thank you, to all the underpaid, hard-working teachers out there who do all of it just for the love of making someone else’s life better. You are the most undervalued heroes in our society.
Sincerely,
A College Student
