If We Value Our Children’s Futures, We Should Value Our Public School Teachers

To judge a society, look at what it values. We value our kids and their futures. The education system isn’t perfect ? if you want perfection, take up religion ? but we send them off to school because we love them and want them to have a better life than we had. In turn, we entrust certain responsibilities upon paid and trained professionals, who perform duties we have become largely blind to, particularly in the wake of recent attacks on teachers by people like Governor Chris Christie.

Teachers are society’s punching bags ? asked to perform tasks we can hardly imagine and rarely appreciate thanks to a biased media and ignoramuses like Christie and others, while society largely regards educators as overpaid, entitled babysitters who are called, at least here in Vancouver, Canada, “Mickey Mousers” — the feeble argument being that “those who can, do; those who can’t do, teach.”

Until the 1960s (as we stroll down memory lane) female teachers were so badly treated that they were given the pink slip simply because they wanted to choose a husband. I need not elaborate on such backward thinking which may still exist in certain parts of America; but this sort of snobbery and abuse against educators has gone on for decades and desperately needs re-evaluation, and an ounce of intellectual honesty (quite the challenge for many of our elected officials). Maybe we need a visit from Education Advocate Malala Yousafzai to teach America’s state legislators and parents what is really important.

This isn’t about the bargaining methods, good or bad, of teacher’s unions. This is about what we value and respect, and what it is worth to us to have an education system that works — for ourselves, our kids, our province, and yes, our educators. The teacher’s union shouldn’t have to have a charismatic leader in the vein of President Obama in order to achieve fair deals from your state governments that are good for everyone, including our kids. The public should demand that the government have basic common priorities, but when politicians, after throwing billions at oil companies and banks, can’t balance their budgets as a result, teachers are attacked for being greedy, selfish, lazy, poorly educated money grubbers (see: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie).

There are good teachers and there are bad teachers, as in any profession, to be sure. But lumping them all together as an argument for the purpose of slander and broad, inaccurate generalizations, as if they are a government-enabled corporate cancer that feasts upon the masses and their pocketbooks, displays ignorance and a lack of compassion for children and the people we have entrusted to educate them and give them a decent head start in life.

The vast majority of teachers aren’t ?Mickey Mousers? who couldn’t find any easier ride in university, but people who genuinely care about your kids, whether you do or not, and when they are unable, because of a lack of resources, to do their jobs effectively and educate kids who come with a myriad of unfortunate issues and concerns (including lack of adequate funding), that should not reflect badly upon the educators trying to teach kids who have to share textbooks with the kid sitting next to them, but rather on the elected officials who refuse to fund the system with our hard-earned cash in any meaningful way to allow that educator to make a difference in those kids? lives and futures.

The education system’s basic goal should be to ensure these kids don’t grow up and mug me in 10 years. At this point, I’m not holding my breath, nor should you. And the blame falls squarely upon our legislative bodies — and our own neglect as parents — who have failed in our responsibility to give our educators the tools they require in order to make a difference in young lives.

Here are 6 examples of the issues, courtesy of an actual teacher in my family (not some partisan rag), that teachers deal with on a daily basis:

1. Kids sharing textbooks (you can imagine how difficult assigning homework would be)
2. Lack of decent seating for the kids to be able to see what is being taught
3. Kids whose English is subpar and requires extra help and attention as a result
4. Giant class sizes that preclude the teacher from helping multiple struggling students
5. Kids who come to school hungry or suffering from psychiatric conditions through no fault of their own, but nevertheless require specialized attention ? attention teachers alone are unable to provide, because they are only human
6. Laying down their very lives to save the kids in their classroom in the event of a shooting or some such crisis situation

Moreover, when you devalue the work of an educator, you devalue the child they worked hard to prepare for life as an adult. Teachers receive all of the criticism when things go wrong, but none of the praise when they go right.

But what do right wing politicians insist when it is argued that public education is underfunded and lacking in necessary resources to effectively educate America’s kids, the future of the “free world”? That government has spent so much money on other misadventures that its resources are depleted and the money, YOUR money, required to fully fund the education system, an ideal they meekly insist is of some value, has been spent elsewhere. The cost of the Northern Gateway Pipeline (called Keystone in America), when all said and done, will be in the neighborhood of $5 to $6 billion. I can think of far cheaper ways to cause environmental damage and violate property rights, but for the sake of the reader and argument, I will not discuss them here.

Let me ask you, though, since we have come this far together: do the priorities of your state’s elected officials, especially on this issue, reflect your values? To answer this question, one must look at the allocation of monies assigned to other prominent sectors of the federal government.

U.S. taxpayers subsidize, for example, oil companies to the tune of nearly $52 billion per year. I understand the politics of it (you don’t want to mess with huge, private entities unless you want a repeat of November, 1963). $610 billion goes to the military — and that doesn’t include the cost of killing children with drone strikes in Pakistan. Don’t need to educate the dead, right?

The cost to the Feds for educating our kids? Hit the link to find out. It may surprise you.

Ultimately, this issue of educating America’s children is one of values and respect. I do NOT understand our values. If we value our kids more than we do oil company profits, murdering brown people in cold blood and corporate cronyism, we should value the people we have hired to do a job we decided long ago would be a function of government for the benefit of all (to Glenn Beck, that might stink of “socialism”). If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. ?One child, one teacher, one pen, and one book can change the world.?

The issue of education, more than most issues, is YOUR issue and requires YOUR participation. YOU have the power to demand better from the school system and your elected officials. The next time you see a teacher, whether you have kids of your own or not, take the time to stop and thank them. They are the reason you haven’t been mugged by some punk kid today, or you got good service at a restaurant from a friendly young server and nobody spat in your fries at McDonald’s. They make a difference in your life every single day, even if you’re a DINK (Double Income No Kids).

Yes, Malala, one teacher, one child and one concerned parent at a time. Demand better, if you want your kids to live at least as good a life as you have had.

In keeping with not wasting your valuable time, I will finish with a link to one of my resources, a teacher from Canada who is doing incredibly innovative things with students. If this issue matters to you, I invite you to check it out.

Support our public school teachers, because they support you.

Thank you to those who took the time to comment on my previous articles, whether positive or negative. Your thoughts help me improve as a writer, which is good for all of us. Thank you for reading my articles and commenting on them. I really appreciate your feedback, good and bad, and the people at Liberal America for giving me the chance to pursue my dream.