I had a different blog post planned for today, but I woke up to this NPR story about education and I got so mad I just have to rant about it!

What I hate about American culture is the hatred of teachers and education. Almost every parent thinks they know how their son or daughters teacher should do things differently. There is the pervasive cultural legend about the person with no education who became a millionaire/business success/you name it. The implication being that education is unnecessary, useless, even maybe a detriment. If you think I am exaggerating, what about the millions of home schoolers keep their kids out of the education system because they do think it is a detriment to our society? What about the story of the person with a masters degree that was such an idiot? What about all the persistent FALSE story that Bill Gates doesn't have a college education?

When the public education system in this country goes wrong we blame the teachers. This makes such sense because the number one predictor of student success is ZIP CODE!!!!! That is like blaming the farm workers because a grower can't grow a successful tomato crop San Francisco fog. It also makes total sense to blame teachers because the public education system in this country (and especially in our lovely state of California) has been UNDERFUNDED. To blame teachers for lack of success in a severely underfunded system is like blaming factory workers for making bad product on machines that have not been upgraded or maintained. That makes sense!!

No, it isn't about sense or logic. It is about a failure of our culture to value education and educators. My Mexican born students have respect for education and the contrast is striking. When they call me "Teacher" the word comes out of their mouth full of respect and a little bit of awe. I really didn't realize that American culture didn't respect their teachers until I heard what an inborn respect for education and educators sounded like.

It is also about a failure to see our public education system as a PUBLIC GOOD. It is like public health, the public highways, the public utilities. Education of any one of us is good for all of us and taxpayers should be willing to pay for this. Over the past decade (maybe more) the cost of education has been pushed from the state to the individual and the push is for even more of the cost of education to be born by us all individually. You want a good education for your children? You can have it, just put them in private school, or send them to higher education with your own dime. But that is another blog post and I don't have the energy....

I fell better now. Off to the garden!