Is Education Truly Free?
There is a common phrase
that goes “the best things in life are free”. However, if that’s true then why
can public education be one of the worst? Most do not think about the fact that
the United States is ranked 24 in worldwide education when we are a very successful
1st world country. Yet so many parts of the U.S. have such poor
living conditions and education you would think it is a 3rd world
country. A likely misconception is that bad neighbor hoods and bad schools go
hand in hand. That one is not necessarily the cause of the other. However, I am
in firm affirmation that bad neighborhoods are caused by bad schools and that
if schools were improved that the quality of life around the school would also
improve. I will establish that education is the most important value in a child’s
life, which no child is inherently unskilled or uneducated, that the schools
abandon the students before the students abandon the schools, and what we can
do to improve our broken education system with issues of tenure and budget. I
will prove this by making reference to such works as Savage Inequalities
by Jonathan Kozol, as well as the documentary “Waiting for Superman”.
First off why should we
value education in a young man or woman’s life? Why is it necessary to put that
above all else? Well it’s simple, because education is priceless. If any
student has the right knowledge, can apply it, and has the motivation to do so
they can achieve and contribute so much back. If children are the future then
invest in the progress of them. In Savage Inequalities the author
interviews a series of teachers across the United States about why they think
their school is failing; in one such interview a teacher speaks on why her
school should get funding, saying “For the brightest kids, the ones who have a
chance at a four year college, we cannot provide a AP program…They’ve been
given less but will be judged by the same tests.” Well some parents do care
about a child’s education, but only their own child, they can only focus and
see if their child is successful and could care less if any kid grows to
contribute and be a productive member of society. Why should you care about any
other child besides your own? You do not owe any type of obligation to other
children, they are just the offspring of strangers you do not know or care
about. Well care to make a better world for the next generation. To give the
basic necessities to those who so desperately need them. To provide knowledge
is to provide hope to the students of tomorrow, to give more than you received just
to make others can be treated on equal terms.
Another observation that
many seem to forget is that no child is inherently bad or ignorant. A large
majority of people seem to forget that the punks they see on the streets of
Oakland, St. Louis, Chicago, or New York, were once innocent toddlers with
hopes and dreams of the future. But were met with constant disappointment and
not given the tools or education to purse what they wanted from a young age and
eventually give up hope on school. When talking to a kinder-garden teacher in Savage
Inequalities the teacher brings up this very point and adds “If one stands
here in this kinder-garden room and does not know these things the moment seems
auspicious. But if one knows the future that awaits it is terrible to see their
eyes look up at you with friendliness and trust.” Some could argue that this is
a competitive world and educational system we live in and that those who truly
are gifted or inspired can raise to the top despite the shackles of poverty. In
response I say the lives of students should be treated equally, and not that
everyone gets the same funding. The schools that need more money than others deserve
more, every school should be treated on a case by case basis not one certain
standard. The schools that are already successful should not get extra funding,
they are already working, use that money on schools that are barely holding and
need basic utilities. Our current system makes the rich get richer and the
schools that struggle are stuck to wallow in their own poverty.
Which leads into my next
point, the schools that are poorly funded are responsible for the dropouts that
they form. As said before these kids are optimistic at a young age, but they
are not ignorant, students catch on quickly when they realize that they the
private school down the street or the charter school in the next district over
is getting much more funding and services than they are. When author Jonathan
Kozol talked to a pregnant high school student about why she was having a child
so early she responded “Well, there’s no reason not to have a baby. There’s not
much for me in public school.” For low income communities with little to no work,
education can be the only escape for those who want to achieve more in life.
And it is heartbreaking to see and hear so many give up on their own futures
because of others selfishness; taking money from education is taking away other’s
dreams of bigger success. More than just that it hurts later, you either pay
for their education now or you pay for their prison sentence later, and you pay,
on average, ten thousand more.
If that is the case when
how can we fix our education system thus bringing the communities around them
higher? Well it is not easy and not all the answers are readily available. In
addition radical changes to education is going to be met with backlash and hostility
from those who are benefitting from our current status. As Bill Gates said “We can change the status
quo but it’s gonna take a lot of outrage.” Those would benefit are the
underserving teachers who cannot be fired because of the ludicrous rules of
tenure. Now I’m not saying tenure was originally a bad thing, in fact it was
made with the best intentions. To protect teachers from getting fired because
of their beliefs or ways of teaching and that still works at the college level
(mostly) due to have difficult it is for college professors to obtain tenure. Again,
in “Waiting for Superman” they go in depth on how tenure at the high school
level and below is ruining schools because many teachers stop caring because
they have such high level of security in their job. “The things we’ve don’t to
make our schools better have prevented our schools from working.” In most
states tenure in public schools requires two years of just showing up, not high
performance or review just attending the job that deciedes the futures of children.
This is no secret either, students are constantly uploading videos of teachers
who sleep in class, ignore their students, or even hit children; travesties that are right in front of us and
yet choose to ignore. Because firing a bad teacher with tenure in nearly impossible
and everyone has an experience in school where all the students and faculty had
at least one deplorable educator in their school, but could not do a thing because
the teacher had tenure. I know I did growing up, did you?
My final point is that our education budget should
be higher if we want our system to be better. A lot of people always say
"children are our future", but it's amazing how little they are
willing to sacrifice for our future. Because especially in California, when we
needed money instead of rising taxes our education budget was cut. Then again,
and again, and again. Now our education fund is a husk of what it used to be,
and our public schools are suffering big-time for it. So if we want kids to
stay in school and be excited for it then shouldn't we invest more in it? With
such little resources it’s no wonder kids don't get much out of school. It can
feel so empty and shallow and it hurts our teachers as much as it hurts our
students. I've known and know plenty of teachers who have had to pay out of
pocket of the resources they require for their lessons in day to day classes.
It has gone to a ludicrous amount now, with such little funds schools are
closing left and right and classes become incredibly overcrowded. So if we want
to end it we need to give back and end this cycle instead of continuing this
loss onto our children in the future.
In conclusion, the
neighborhoods that most are afraid to drive by, locking their car doors and pitying
the poor children that have to be in the schools are in that condition because
of those bad schools and it can be fixed. I want to stress that education, the
passing and exchange from teacher to student and back, is so crucial to
bettering the communities that surround schools. Although it might be difficult
and it might be costly it will pay off in the end in spades because a quality
standard of learning should be available to all children because, after all,
the best things in life are free.
Works
cited:
Kozol,
Jonathan. “Savage Inequalities”. Broadway Books, 1991.
Guggenheim,
Davis. “Waiting for Superman”. January 22nd 2010.
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