Our Nation is Failing to Live up to One of its TWO Primary Obligations

Where there is a democracy ( or democratic republic), the government should have two duties: to protect its citizenry from enemies, foreign and domestic, and to educate the public, so the ideals and principles by which the nation is upheld can be acted upon with intelligence, rather than ignorance.


In addition, if this country participates in a free market system, a well educated public, rather than being a  fiscal drain, contributes to the economy in greater ways.

Years ago, it was not the state or federal government who educated Americans. 

Public education institutions became "commandeered", through decades and centuries past, by state and federal entities and bureaucracies, and with this "benevolent" takeover, the enormous flow of tax dollars which supported public schools found its way into the leaky coffers of our government.

Today, education finds itself in a stranglehold, begging for money, which year by year seems to have slipped away from one of the two primary government obligations, into the hands of an ever growing variety of subsidiary institutions and programs.

Educators, who signed contracts with districts under one set of circumstances, are now finding all they had rested their professional and financial futures on to be crumbling.

Looking on at the fiscal actions taken against teachers by local, state, and the federal governments from the periphery, are those employees working for private businesses, or those who now find themselves unemployed (due to downsizing within private companies), and they have little sympathy for teachers.

They point to individuals who have lost their retirement funds, when the money they had invested in the private corporations, with which they had once been employed, vanished along with their bankrupt employers.

Politicians point to the "six figure" retirement salaries of educators as a means of raising public anger towards teachers' unions as a way of taking more money from education in order to fund future state budgets. 

 In reality, not only are large retirement salaries for teachers rare (unless news reports are referring to administrators who were once teachers or teachers who work at prisons), but these enviable retirement accounts are non-existent in the realm of rank-and-file public school teachers.

In most districts, if a teacher is even employed long enough to reach retirement, their monthly retirement pay is typically HALF of the average of the last three years of their annual salary. This is FAR from the six figure pensions spoken of during recent news reports.

In addition, most districts require teachers to contribute to their retirement. 

Another idea which inflames the anger of the private employee is that there are teachers receiving private health care without contributing on a monthly basis. If there is a district who is paying for their teachers'  health benefits entirely, before or after retirement, there are thousands of teachers who would like to know about it.  Teachers pay a portion, sometimes a large portion, of their health insurance. In most districts, the day a teacher retires is the day their health benefits end with a district.

In other words, the public is being fed erroneous information which has not raised indignation towards state and federal leaders who have obviously mismanaged the taxpayer money which was intended for public education. Instead, the public rage over bankrupt states has been heaped upon the backs of public educators.

Citizens of this country have come to expect their government to protect them, and to educate them. Who is going to be left to teach when the profession is clearly the first to be hammered when state funds run low?

Do we complain because our service men and women, many who receive far higher salaries than teachers with the same amount of education, when they are provided with pensions and military healthcare privileges?

No.

Why?

Because we appreciate their sacrifice in protection of our country.

Those who are complaining about the pittance offered to teachers, both their salaries and pensions, have obviously not stepped into the modern public school classroom. 

Though public school teachers do not offer to lay down their lives for their fellow citizens, as do military men and women, they do give of their personal time and resources to lift, inspire, and to instill applicable skills and knowledge.

Yes, it is their "profession", and so the public expects this behavior, just as they expect service men and women to commit to the call and duty of their military career, but the sacrifice is accepted in gratitude just the same.

And so it should be with teachers.

Our nation's government has sworn to protect us, and our citizens do not blink when contributing billions and billions in tax dollars to the military.

Do we not also expect our government to fund the public education system, and to gainfully employ well-educated professionals, who will lead the cause of instilling principles of citizenship and the intellectual assets for our youth to become contributors to a free market economy? 


If not the government, then who?


The people who take the charge of educating "the future of America" are teachers, not politicians or bureaucrats.

Is it a coincidence that there have been recent attacks on public education, making it seem as though a mass majority of American schools and teachers are abominable? 


Certainly not. 

If Americans do not feel they are getting their tax dollars worth, they have no problem attacking an organization and its members.

And why should an irresponsible government mind these attacks based on distorted reports, if it saves them money...at least in the short-run?