Rant: Education Sacrificed

This post was originally a small comment on Marc's "Tenure?" posting on Another Look Around, but as I continued my comment, I found myself wanting to say more and more on the subject. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was essentially writing a blog entry on someone else's blog. Bad form. So, I mentioned I was going to post this on my own site. Not good form, but not as bad as the full post itself. I'm no master of debate, nor am I all that interested in politics, but I felt I should still say something. Anyway, here's the rant it became...

The California budget is jacked up. The economy is jacked up everywhere. (Captain Obvious here with news you already know.) What stinks is we have politicians who don't appear to care about solving the situation. Sure, they talk about solving things, but where is the balanced budget in California? They are still getting paychecks while people are losing their jobs. People and jobs, by the way, that are crucial to our future. One of those jobs is that of educator, and they will be among the first to pay the price of poor government in this doom's day plan. Our children will be the next ones to pay the price as kids are jammed into classrooms of 30+ students and suffer the side-effects of overcrowded classrooms. Next are all the "trickle-down" losses and troubles stemming from the lost jobs and poor learning conditions (trouble at home, for one). Ultimately, these children will be the same ones who will work in our companies and government, and care for us in our old age. Would you really want that to play out that way?

To me, it seems like we're all on a boat leaking and listing somewhere in the south Pacific. Some people are bailing as fast as they can, but the water is rising quickly. Others are trying to fix the leaks, but they are not boatwrights, so they cause about as much damage as they repair. Finally, there is a group who, in an effort to improve their cold and wet condition, are prying up planks and throwing them into a fire they built on the bow! Unfortunately, if we try to follow rats jumping off the ship, we'll drown just like them. So we're stuck here, hoping someone can do something to fix our situation before we all go under. (Look at me... I'm the one in the back stating the obvious and annoying everyone in earshot... yeah, the first one to get eaten by the shark, causing everyone in the theater to cheer.)

We already have one of the worst ranked education systems in the nation, and now we're about to cut the funding further? This is in addition to the proposed cap of lottery money income at the current rate of $1.2 billion (from some sources, that is around 3% of the annual education spending in California). This is happening during a time where things are costing more and becoming harder to come by.

The education system seems to be broken. What other profession do you have to go through college, get a degree, take additional classes, take certification tests, serve a two year probationary internship, endure repetitive annual state mandated training, suffer through lack of funding, and spend your own money to get supplies? Then, as if that wasn't enough, have your "bosses" tell you your pay will be linked to your performance, but you can't deviate from a particular curriculum, even to bouy the slow learners? It stinks like day old roadkill skunk. I didn't even get into poor curriculums, monopolistic text book contracts, poorly designed government policies, and the insanity of penalizing schools and teachers for not having kids perform in the higher percentiles in the "bell curve" ranked standardized testing (perhaps someone needs to explain a "bell curve" to government officials again).

[Whoa, look over there. Something is coming out of left field.]

Meanwhile, the 2008 NFL team player salaries totalled $3,624,115,487 for the 2008-2009 season. Yep. 3.6 billion dollars. With a 'B'. I can watch a bunch of people play football for free in a park. People who are playing for free and having fun. That large figure was for the players in one sport. Imagine how much money the entire professional sports industry generates. Season tickets, official jerseys, logo merchandise, product endorsements, and the list goes on. Staggering, huh? I think professional athletes' (not just football or even just sports I suppose) salaries should be capped (keep it high at $200,000, why not) and the "extra" money diverted into schools. It won't solve our problem, but it could put a minor dent in it. Wow, that sounds SO socialist... spreading the money around like that... but we have people being paid enormous amounts of money and they really don't contribute much to society other than entertainment. We worship them for it and ignore what really should matter. Instead, let's funnel that "excess" money into something important to our future (other than a memory of a good game and a collection of statistics), rather than entertainment, and we might be able to dig ourselves out of this hole we're in.

Children want to become professional athletes--not that there's anything wrong with striving for a goal, even an impractical and nigh unachievable one. I think they strive to be athletes because "we" like athletes, we put them on TV, we pay them lot's of money, and we pay them to do things most people do for free; play ball games. Maybe--and here's a really against-the-grain thought--maybe we should pay educators more. Like, lots more. Make that the job students strive for to get one of the few slots. We'd end up with better educators, and each generation would be smarter than the one before. Nice by-product.

Imagine what it would be like if we valued the valuable people in our society, instead of the athletes, actors, and rock stars.

There's so much more to say on this subject... but as usual, I'm quite tired and I have to work tom... er... today. Also, I could and probably should list all the resources I read while writing this post, but they are numerous, including USA Today, LA Times, CNN, the State of California, and on and on. If this issue bugs you, you'll have no trouble finding material on the subject.