The world has changed so much since I was a kid.  The latest GOOD reminded me again how much. 

I remember how insistent my dad was about getting a college education.  He had not completed college. Because of the the great depression, he had to leave school and get a job.  He never went back and really held feelings that it hampered him from being all that he had hoped to be.  He was quite a brilliant man and never felt he had reached his potential.  So he was insistent that all of us go and graduate.  He tried to decide what each of us would major in.  Bev wanted to be a teacher.  My dad thought the future was in business, so he told her that had to be her major.   Bev tried to fight him on it but he was insistent, and to get even she flunked out.  She ended up being very successful in what she ended up doing (bookkeeper for an insurance company) but she never went  back to college and always wished she had been a teacher.  Russ wanted to be a minister.  Dad again tried to push him into business.  My brother stood up for himself and told my dad if he wouldn’t let him be a minister, he was going to go into education, and my mom was around to convince my father to allow it. When I came along, I wanted to be a social worker.  He told me I had enough trouble handling my own problems without taking on other peoples.  He agreed to let me major in elementary education. 

I give you this background to show you we were a family of children who wanted to make things better for others.  Just like many of the people interviewed for the articles.  The only difference is, having a college education used to mean something.  Having your education meant a job that allowed you to support yourself while you were doing something that you really wanted to do.  I think how different it is now.  A college education doesn’t seem to mean squat.  All of the kids interviewed had had good educations and ended up either not finding a job, not finding one in their chosen field, or not being able to support themselves doing the work in their chosen field.  The article on teaching was painful to read.  I loved my job as a classroom teacher, but by the time I retired many things had changed. I had lost my passion.  The fun of teaching was lost , due to meeting the “requirements of No Child Left Behind,”  a law that was passed with absolutely no funding to support the intiative.  I never thought I would get rich teaching.  The richness had to be in loving kids and helping them reach their potential.

I worked from the time I was 16 in various service jobs. My last two years in high school I was a waitress in a restaurant like IHop.  And the summer before I left for college, my dad helped me get a job with Firestone as a filing clerk. The pay was the most I had made, but I sat at a desk all day sorting invoices by their numbers and filing them in filing cabinets.  Eight hours a day, five days a week.  The pay wasn’t as exciting a few weeks into the job.  My dad talked to me about what I would get to do in life would be dependent on my completing my education.  If I didn’t want a mindless office job or to be waiting tables, I needed to buckle down and work hard at school.  I got the message. Although I have to tell you that my first contract was for $7100.  About my seventh year of teaching,  90% of the teachers in my District went out on strike.  We hadn’t had a cost of living raise for five years, and at the meeting to decide what we would do, a high school teacher got up and said for the first time in his twenty year career his kids qualified for the free and reduced lunch program.  The vote was taken shortly after that, and we walked picket lines for thirty days.  And as your article said, it has never gotten better for teachers.
 
You are one of the lucky ones.  You got your education, without too much debt, and you have finally found a job you love doing.  How many kids are traveling to Brazil to celebrate their birthday, let alone renting a beach house with their friends?  I am glad you are not the drug dealer (legal or not), the waiter or bartender, and yes, I am glad you are not the teacher. 
 
I love you son.  Please don’t do anything crazy in Brazil or anywhere else.  And follow the advice on page 93 of your magazine.

Love, Mom

10:31 am  •  28 February 2012  •  23 notes