U.S. Education

For a country that claims to value education, we sure don't act like it. We always have enough money to fund war or bailout banks that weren't doing their jobs. We have enough money for the president to eat luxury food prepared by a gourmet chef. Our politicians have enough money to throw huge campaigns and live in luxury. We say we value education, but our students use outdated textbooks, sit in old desks, and lose opportunities in a classroom of 30 kids.

America doesn't value education. We don't seem to understand that a child's proficiency in any given subject cannot be measured by standardized testing alone. And while our ideals are high -we want to be great at math, science, reading, and writing- we do not make that ideal attainable but for the elite, lucky few. Poverty breeds poverty, and those who were born with easy opportunity seem to think that anyone, just anyone, should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Impossible.

Think about it: if you were born to a family too busy trying to work 3 jobs to make ends meet, who never completed high school, in a poor neighborhood, the unfortunate chances are good that you would wind up in an impoverished, overcrowded school. You wouldn't get the support you needed at home or at school to truly achieve. No matter how smart you were, you need someone to guide you. If your parents cannot read, how can they teach you to read? It's a vicious cycle, that isn't easily fixed.

Except, in an ideal world, it is. In an ideal world, our government would spend enough money on schools to pay for textbooks, helpers, and after-school activities for at-risk youth. But, I guess in Utopia, you don't have to worry that someone won't be educated, because it's a fantasy world where everything is perfect.

And it's not even just that we don't spend enough on education. We spend money on the wrong things. No offense to all the teachers out there, but some of you are pretty damn ineffective. You might be great people, you might love children, you might not. But for whatever reason, we should NOT be employing teachers who are unenthusiastic, incompetent, or effective. But, we are. We are. We pay ineffective teachers greater salaries because of their seniority, their tenure.

I don't think that standardized testing is the way to go about analyzing teachers, because even a great teacher can't be perfect in a classroom of 30 kids, or with little money. But our school administrators need to be more involved. Our government needs to provide more funding for our public schools, and each school can then monitor teacher quality. It's not easy, I never said it was. But sometimes the most necessary things are the most difficult, and if we valued education as much as we claim to, we would do the work and overturn the established system.

A system, mind you, of which I and my childhood friends fall victim. When I started high school, we had to fundraise because the science budget for the whole school was a whopping $16. Can you imagine? Less than a month's allowance for the entire school to spend on science. Luckily, I did have a fantastic (and generous) teacher who used his own money to fund experiments and such for us. But is that right? No!

In my school, especially middle and high schools, it felt like nobody really gave a damn. We were the "underachieving" schools, who got low test scores, joined gangs, had babies, did drugs, got in fights, dropped out. Yeah, we did all that. We cared about school more than people gave us credit for, too. We strove to rise above our adversities. Sometimes -often- we failed. There were many fantastic teachers who cared a whole lot about us, who went above and beyond to give us quality education. To them, I am grateful. To the rest, who accepted the status quo, who disdained us, who punished and never rewarded us, and, above all, who prevented us from achieving all that we could possibly have been, I sarcastically thank you.

Thanks for looking the other way when we ditched class right in front of your face. Your apathy becomes you, no wonder you never made it farther than a poor-ass inner city school with a bunch of smart but less-than-motivated kids. We had zero respect for our principal at my high school. She was the worst of the worst, as I recall it. Glad she's retired, probably with a decent pension.

And let me make this clear: my peers and I, we were SMART. We were STRONG, INDEPENDENT, CAPABLE, and yes, even MOTIVATED (when we wanted to be). We had SO much potential, and my classmates more so than I, LIVED UP TO IT. They are doing amazing things. Even the students I did not know, who were the real dropouts, druggies, teen moms, gang-bangers...I don't look down on any of them. I respect the teen moms who went to school while raising their kid, or dropped out to take care of their kid. I respect the dropouts who had to work to help out at home. I understand the kids who turned to drugs because school wasn't engaging enough. I even understand, though not condone, the gang-bangers who wanted to feel powerful after feeling powerless for so long.

I believe, after seeing it with my own eyes, that every kid is amazing. Every kid has the potential to overcome their adversities, to open the eyes of strangers, and to change the world, but only if they are nurtured, encouraged, and supported from all angles. Are we teaching our kids to be scientists, and look at the world with wonder and curiosity? Are we teaching them to be activists, and fight for what they believe in? Are we teaching them to be good citizens and support what's right and condemn what's wrong, to have an active voice? I don't think we are, so what ARE we teaching our kids?

It goes on and on and on. There's a movie coming out called Waiting for Superman, about the American school system. I would highly recommend that you go see it. In fact, pledge to go see it on the website. For each certain number of pledges received, they will donate to a school district. Go pledge, and support our kids. We SHOULD be terrified and outraged by this movie, we need to change what's wrong with ourselves. Please go check it out!