Semi-educated Rambling

Honestly, I'm not even really sure where to begin with this topic.  I don't have a great outline of my post laid out, and so this may turn into an unstructured flow of thoughts more than anything.  Let's see how it goes!

I suppose I'll start with what I think is one of the biggest concerns about teachers, and that's their salary.  One of my friends is an elementary school teacher, and she's given me some detail (though not told me directly) how much she makes... and I'm shocked by how little it is.  In addition, my ex planned for years to be a teacher, but she eventually abandoned that idea because she just didn't think she'd be able to support herself on a teacher's salary.  I know that the debate over teachers' salaries has existed for a long, long time, but it still feels like a really important issue to me.  We have a lot of things in the US that feel like giant wastes of money, and I have to question whether that money could be used to better support the people that are supposed to be teaching the people that will eventually be running our nation.  How many athletes make millions of dollars for playing a sport (which doesn't even span an entire year)?  How much could we improve our school systems if even one of the major sports took a year off, and donated the money they would've paid the athletes (less enough for them to live comfortably, of course) to the educational system?  How much could we improve if this was a yearly thing, with the sports affected rotating through a schedule? ... I enjoy sports, for the most part, and I understand that a large portion of the nation follows them seriously (almost religiously, in some cases).  But this seems like a fairly simple sacrifice that would be a huge benefit to the concept of funding educational reform - not only increasing teachers' salaries, but making necessary improvements to schools in order to keep them competitive and efficient.

I can see people making the argument that if teachers get a salary increase, their students' grades should increase, but I don't think it's quite that simple.  It's been a long, long time since I was in school (particularly the non-college variety), but I'd imagine that one of the bigger challenges facing teachers is relating the material to students in a way that they can understand.  There's a lot of pressure on teachers to get the material across to -every- student, and that seems like it can be fairly intimidating.  I would imagine that class size is one of the largest contributing factors - I've always been a fan of smaller classes, where the students could get more individualized attention.  I haven't looked into the details, but I'm going to make the (possibly incorrect) assumption that the opposite is happening in schools, for the most part - classes are getting bigger as schools are closed and students are relocated, in an effort to save money.  Larger class sizes seem like they'd be detrimental to creating an atmosphere where every student can learn; from my years of management experience, I can share that a large part of the problem, sometimes, isn't in what you're communicating, but how you're communicating it.  Some people need things explained to them in different ways than "normal" in order to really grasp the concepts being presented, and that seems like something more easily accomplished in a smaller setting.

This isn't a problem that can be fixed just by throwing money at it, though.  I think that, somehow, the mentality of our nation needs to change to put more of an emphasis on education - from the teachers all the way down to the students themselves.  I'm not an expert on foreign education trends, but it seems like students in foreign countries have the mindset of wanting to not only attend school, but to excel.  To them, school isn't a mandatory exercise in frustration and futility, it's a real opportunity to learn and better themselves.  I don't think enough students in our country truly believe that the things they learn in school are beneficial to them and their adult life, and the truth is that they miss opportunities because of it.  The question of how to change the mentality of people is a tough one, though, and not one that I have a good answer to.  My initial thoughts include the idea of the government taking a more active role in schools and the curriculum taught, but there are a lot of inherent flaws and issues that would take ages to resolve.

I don't have too much to offer as far as the cost of college education goes.  My only real experience with it is knowing several people who got into debt from taking out student loans, and had to spend years devoting part of their income to paying those off.  I personally don't like the idea of having a long-standing debt, but I don't think it's necessarily a terrible thing - it seems like the easiest way to allow people access to higher learning, while still providing the place of education needed income.  The timely repayment of the loans (assuming such a thing happens) would help the credit of the loanee, and... well, I don't see much else that could efficiently replace the system.  I don't think that a college degree is a necessity, yet, but I definitely see things moving in that direction.  I'm at a point in my life where I can comfortably support myself, and I don't have a degree - however, in order to give myself the best opportunities I can at what I want to do, I'm going to work toward earning one.

Ultimately, I do think reform is needed here, in order to stay competitive with the rest of the world - but I don't think it's reform that can be accomplished quickly.  We need to change the core thinking that lies at the root of our educational system, and let the effects spread outward from there.  The unfortunate part about this concept is that it would take a lengthy amount of time, and a lot of money, to accomplish - but in the end, I feel that the results would be more than worth it.

Apologies if my post this week wasn't excellent - I'll try to do better next week.  Pendleton's up tomorrow, so everyone should look forward to reading what she has to say.