It was recognized early in our nation’s history that universal education is extremely important to maintaining a successful democracy. Without an educated populace, it is difficult to fill the jobs necessary for a successful economy. Furthermore, our democratic system requires that citizens of voting age meet a basic level of education, without which it would be impossible to make an informed vote. It would not, therefore, be an exaggeration to say that universal education is a fundamental part of a successful nation.
Unfortunately, the familiar refrain of politicians at all levels of government, “Our public schools are a failure,” is back once again. The complaint: Students in American public schools are lagging behind their peers in other countries. In the past several years, there have been several misguided attempts to remedy this problem, the most infamous being the charter school and voucher programs. While some saw limited success, they generally failed to fully address the problem.
During every election, politicians on all sides discuss the importance of education, and pass bills to try to improve the system. The sad thing is that most of the well-publicized plans for “fixing” public education do no such thing. For example, the No Child Left Behind program contains language which, if implemented correctly, would certainly improve the situation, but the same government which passed this bill and sings its praises refuses to fund it fully; President Bush requests only $13.3 billion in funds out of an authorized $22.75 billion. The voucher and charter systems, falsely purporting to give parents more choices concerning their children’s education, would not fix the problem. In fact, they seek to do away with it entirely by replacing an public sector system with a private system funded by public money. Although that could have some advantages, it would lose the standardization and accountability that the current system has.
We talk about how important it is to educate our children, yet the average pay for a high school teacher is only $46,597 as of 2004. In comparison, the average salary for an engineer is $78,023. If education is truly such an important job, why is there such a disparity in pay? For a society which prides itself on being educated, we seem to put little value in the importance of the educators themselves. We pay teachers so little and ask of them so much, and then we wonder why the quality of education is sub-par. There is a basic hypocrisy here which must be addressed, both for the sake of our children and for the sake of the future of our society. No amount of standardized testing or privatized systems will improve the quality of education if we continue to consider it a second class profession not worthy of our respect.
