I know it isn't proper English. It is, however, part of a response by one of those PhD DocDudes that taught master's degree classes for teachers who had eyes on becoming administrators one day. According to my-most-recent-almost-future-ex-wife, when they would ask how to manage a problem child he would merely reply “Momma sent you the best she's got.”
Still not proper English.
Momma sent the best she's got… we can easily look at this statement from two very different perspectives, can't we.
First, we could take it as a statement of resignation, that momma had sent her heathern child to school to be educated with no manners, preparation, and most definitely no support from home.
We could give up before even getting started because it really doesn't matter anyway, does it. The little savages will only wind up on drugs, running the streets in the 'hood, and end up in jail one day... or dead.
Or it could be viewed as a challenge… a gauntlet thrown down... to be picked up by those who choose to become teachers, educators, and education system administrators.
But the operative word here is choice, isn't it, and anyone choosing a specific career path has an obligation to investigate what their options are so far as pay, benefits, hours worked, peripheral obligations, and all of these as they compare to other career options in the area in which they live.
To complain about pay scales in an area such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, because they aren't as high as those in Atlanta, Charlotte, San Francisco, or any other metropolitan area, or the national average, isn't anything but complaining, is it. The cost of living in those areas is different, as is every other cost of operation.
Where does anyone get off advocating for a tax increase just because we haven't had one in a while? Really? I would love to be a fly on the wall if someone, anyone, was to present such a flatulently absurd idea to someone like Madame Commissioner SargeBaby (I have permission!). If we didn't live in Tennessee, where it's illegal, I'd bet good money that individual would learn first hand what it is to be on the receiving end of that Mom Look of hers… the one there isn't a doubt in my mind would singe the Blood Stripes off the Dress Blues, and curl the brim on his Smokey the Bear cover, of the toughest, meanest Marine Corps Drill Instructor at either Pleasure Island or Hollywood. Actually, that probably ought to be a public event.
I want two weeks to sell tickets too.
To advocate a tax increase for pay raises subsequent to the only post World War II, the second war to end all wars, period of seven consistently negative first quarter Gross Domestic Product figures, one must be living in a bubble, totally isolated from the world of profits and losses and returns on investment. When the pay scales are already greater, especially when we add in benefit packages, than the local economy? Really?
Really? When local taxpayers, those who pick up the tab for those expenses and pay increases, are fortunate to have jobs and those who do, frequently haven't had raises either? And their expenses have gone up just as much? Belay that. Their expenses have gone up more if we include insurance increases, employer contribution decreases, and benefit package cost increases, for those who have them.
When our children and grandchildren can't read? When our schools “graduate” young people from high school, 40 percent to 70 percent of whom need remedial instruction in order to meet minimum requirements for those free college bucks?
Really? And they want mo' money?
I would like to see every classroom teacher have the opportunity to earn 6 figure incomes. The operatives here are “opportunity” and “earn.” In the local vernacular, if there be teachin' goin' on there be measurable results to prove it.
When I hear calls for mo' money for schools from bureaucrats, in the back of my mind Rod Serling's voice begins "You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!"
In their 2013 research paper, Following the Money: A Tennessee Education Spending Primer, Benjamin Clark and Alexandria Gilbert with the Beacon Center of Tennessee found the following:
1. Less than 54 percent of total spending is directed at classroom instruction, such as teacher salaries, textbooks, supplies, and other instructional spending… and that figure is in constant decline.
2. Between the years 2000 and 2013 the number of administrators in Tennessee’s education system grew by 34.5 percent, and their salaries increased at a much higher rate than those of teachers.
3. In the same period of time teacher salaries increased less than 17% with the number of studii approximately seven percent greater.
Now, anyone who works with numbers must admit they played a little loosey goosey with their statistics. For example, they cite an administration cost figure of $9,123 per studii in 2013 when the actual per studii expenditure was $10,088, a difference they refer to as “almost 11 percent” that's actually 10.578 percent, but the point is easy to see. Anyone who works with numbers also understands that in order for statistics to have any credibility at all they must be carried out to at least three (3) decimal places.
Their paper may be downloaded and perused here: <http://www.beacontn.org/wp-content/uploads/Following-the-Money.pdf>.
During the trial of George Zimmerman we all watched Trayvon Martin's girlfriend, Rachel Jeantel, a 19-year-old high school senior with a supposed 3.0 GPA but who could barely speak English (American or the Queen's) and by her own admission couldn't read or write cursive. How many more like her are out there?
And still we hear that Momma sent the best she's got, but mo' money and school buildings that look like Taj Mahals will fix the problems.
And our children still can't read.
That's child abuse.
Archie Willard is now 84 years old. At the age of 54 he found himself unemployed and was forced to face the fact he could not read well enough to fill out a job application. But he learned to read, became an activist, wrote a book about his experiences, and in a recent interview commented “If you don't have hope it's hard to know what direction you are going and it is impossible to follow your dreams.” During that same interview I learned there are over 45 million American adults who are functionally illiterate, between 21% and 23% of the adult population of our nation, the greatest nation to ever grace the face of Planet Terra, these United States of America, who can't read well enough to fill out a job application much less understand the technical manual for a sophisticated machine.
If our children and grandchildren can't read, how do they ever have hope of improving their lot in life? How do they ever learn the skills necessary to earn a good living? Or become one of those evil rich dudes, or dudettes?
Tell me, please, what is the rationale for promoting a child out of the third grade who cannot read? There is none, even is he's 27 years old.
Problems with mommy or daddy raising a ruckus over disciplining their heathern child, holding him back because he doesn't meet the requirements for promotion to the next grade level? That's what we have police for. We also have laws on the books that allow those parents to explain to a judge why their precious progeny fail to attend school, are disruptive, hold other studii back by their behavior, and any number of other complaints we hear from the education system. I can recommend several of those judges.
$10,088 per year per student… for students who can't read. When do we demand warranty service?
He's been with us for two months. It's been almost a month since… well, it appears Elvis and I are still in negotiations about my shoes.
Royce Burrage, Jr.
Royce@Officially Chapped.org