Where Your Mouth Is

I find myself unable to calm down about the fact that I recently came across a couple of brochures for local private schools. Their tuitions - for kindergarten - are more than I was taking home as a preschool teacher. One of them charges more for pre-K than I cleared in a year.

I just... I am so angry. I recently found myself explaining to non-teachers that $5,000 for preschool is a competitive price. And you know what? The whole thing just pisses me off. The fact that a good education is still such a money club because we, as a country at large, continue to bitch about how bad our schools are and do nothing but "reform" them over and over with new curriculums, new tests, and new demands on teachers and administrators.

How about, oh, I don't know, funding decent schooling?

How about paying teachers decently and respecting their voices (rather than treating them like the enemy who are somehow responsible for the entire failing system) so that intelligent, reflective people are drawn to the profession and stay there, instead of the current split between caring, overworked educators and mediocre, half-invested educators, neither of whom can teach to the level needed?

No one ever suggests that we determine a politician's pay by the local GDP, or a banker's salary by the number of new accounts versus defaults on the bank's loans. Few question a doctor's medical expertise, or an attorney's legal knowledge, yet teachers are constantly suspected of not knowing what they're doing, and these days, their salaries are subject to their students' test scores. People feel entitled to bitch about what public school teachers do incorrectly, but nobody would sit down with a firefighter or a police officer and say, "I know how to do your job better than you do, because my tax dollars pay your salary." It's a perverse system that pits parents against teachers when really, we should all be on the same page because we all want children to become happy, successful adults.

Why do people who can afford to pay those ridiculous tuitions do so? Because those schools hire good educators, pay them well, and trust in their expertise. That trust shows in the reputations of the schools (and is subsequently reflected in their tuition prices).

There's a whole underlying classism issue that I don't want to dig up, but find myself skirting closer and closer to it. Especially after visiting a former student in her home; this child adores me and the feeling is mutual, but all the goodwill I felt from/for mom fairly much evaporated in the space of an hour, as she felt a need to repeatedly complain to me about how difficult it is to get a good housekeeper.

I'm sorry, what?

It gets me angry to a point where I can't be rational; I work my ass off, and get paid shit, and I have supplemented my income at times with babysitting and housecleaning. And guess what? I have a master's degree. I have training, and certification, and I couldn't afford to send my personal children to just about any of the schools that I'm qualified to teach at.

My vocation is more akin to servitude than to other professions. That, dear reader, is disgusting. And today, I can't even begin to offer potential solutions. Today, I can only manage to be gut-level angry at how many people - children and adults - get the shaft because of the way things work in this country.

America, put your ridiculous amounts of money where your mouth is: fund education properly.