What have we become?

Tonight I had a rather adult discussion about the world at large. I have been attempting to use current events and topics in my classroom as a means for students to become interested in their own world. It is difficult not to completely indoctrinate students with my own values, especially since may arrive in my classroom with few informed opinions, and many experiential biases. To remain impartial and guide students into their own beliefs that are both flexible and with rationale is difficult, especially when I consider the current status of our world.


I often think about the way things are. My girlfriend's Facebook status yesterday read, "You think life is rough? Watching a single mother trying to buy her child lunch at Walmart while she scrapes the bottom of her purse to find another $1.24 is heart breaking. I bought her groceries that only totaled $5.54." I struggle morally with issues of poverty and homelessness, giving, and the virtue of selfishness. I consider this individual, who was later described as a "non-English speaker" and her battle with the empty purse. Her resignation to be helped came only after she had other methods of payment declined. How is it, I ask, that she approached the register with arms full of items, but not the knowledge of their approximate cost? Was her need for these items more heavy than the weight of potential embarrassment? Did she just not think, or did she not know? Was language the only issue?


I cannot help but feel as though we have failed a large number of our own people here in this, the greatest nation. Beyond the obvious lack of math skills, this woman will again have to participate in this unenviable routine for each day that she finds her child hungry and her purse empty. Upon whom does she rely? Where does education and reeducation come into play? 


I think about celebrity and the endless power of suggestion they have. Donations of millions of dollars for a flight to an impoverished African nation makes headline news. A select few become inspired and send what they can to build a school or buy malaria nets. As a graduate of USD, a school that promotes human rights and equality, I clearly remember the parades of green t-shirts in support of freeing Darfur and spreading awareness. I resented the idea of freeing and supporting a nation halfway around the world when a stone's-throw away in Linda Vista was a community suffering in its own right.


Where do we begin? Do we serve others who are more needy or do we serve our own? I inquire not to reveal my own personal views, but rather to solicit opinions and thoughts, conversation, and educated discussion.


Consider our detention centers and "justice" system. My students have read articles describing and discussing the juvenile justice system. What we have discovered is the startlingly high rate of recidivism. The vast majority of youth offenders return to prison before they become adults, and likely will find themselves incarcerated thereafter. Prison systems detain individuals for the length of their sentence, yet spend very little time, if any, rehabilitating offenders. Thus, upon their release, they return to our world the same individual that they entered prison. So, after months or perhaps years of pondering their own crime in a facility where they do not have to want for food or a roof, the reality of the outside world is perhaps too overwhelmingly great. Prison may be a refuge from what is outside the cell walls. I have never, thankfully, been to prison, so I am not, by any means, claiming it is a walk in the park, but it may be easier for some than returning to a world without skills or the necessary rehabilitation. There is little incentive to recover independently when someone is taking care of you.


Let me know proceed by issuing an anger alert: some of you may dislike the following words.


Prisons are only one issue. Watching the homeless population grow exponentially in larger cities across the countries concerns me deeply. Many homeless wind up in jail or prisons because it is a better alternative to cold cement beds. Many locals will quickly shell out a couple of bucks to send to Haiti or Indonesia or donate jackets and blankets to needy people south of the border, but they others will turn a blind eye to the man or woman with the Styrofoam cup. Possibly, it is too painful or real to share a sidewalk with someone who is more like you than the individual who lives in a hut thousands of miles away. Granted, those individuals have fewer resources and means by which they may survivebut it still shocks me how little our nation does to support or neediest of citizens. Buying a homeless person a meal is a start, but I even have issues with that.


One of the most famous parables of Jesus involves the fish. “Give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime.” We don't always have the means to educate and rehabilitate someone on our way to work or while driving past their cardboard petitions. So, throwing a "fish" is an immediate Band Aid, but not a cure. Whose responsibility is it to educate our most struggling populations? How much can we cure through education and rehabilitation? Our failing welfare system seems to be a permanent crutch for those who know how to abuse the system. I am curious to know who is verifying the nutritional content of the food purchased with food stamps? Who is providing birth control to mothers and fathers of multiple children who are already using government assistance? Who is teaching these people how to be self-sustaining?


Educating those who never received a proper education in the first place seems an overwhelming task. Our head-turning and eye-averting behavior has certainly done nothing to improve what is happening presently. Additionally, there is also the fifty-something year-old who finds themselves out of work, owning their home, and devoid of options. Who will hire a person so close to retirement? How will this indivisual sustain themselves until the meagre Social Security check still years in the distance? Why were they not aware of retirement planning? They may have raised children successfully, but the children cannot support the parent and the parent cannot support themselves. Our economical crisis has no place for them but to fail. Like every other abandoned and unaddressed population, these faceless individuals fade into the background, eking out their lives in quiet resignation.


I believe that I have found the cure to all our ailments. Because I am a teacher, you have perhaps seen the thematic underpinnings of my subtle argument. There is a great equalizing element. If we can only foster the existence of the increasingly more endangered purveyors of such a solution, perhaps those weighty demands on out society would become increasingly less dreary. 


Education.


Our future is in our youth. What I do daily is more valuable than I had ever previously imagined. Our governments, however, have failed to appropriately validate and make education significant enough. Budget cuts target education's over-expenditures and look to cut the largest area of categorical spending - teachers. Strangely, teacher salaries are closely rivaled by the cost of imprisoning the average inmate, which varies depending upon facility. I've read that the cost averages approximately $30,000 per inmate annually, which likely includes guard and staff wages, utilities, facility maintenance, legal fees, et cetera. Teachers are as valuable, in some communities, as a convicted felon. How nice.


Furthering the irony, most prison libraries staff a prison librarian, yet our public schools are considering eliminating library positions due to the extra cost. Granted, there are far more public schools than prisons, but it is my belief that the ratio will be less dramatic in the future. There will be an increase in prisons to the point that they rival public schools if our educational system is further ignored and mismanaged. Maybe I'm overreaching for emphasis, however I believe our children will wind up behind bars instead of behind desks, testifying in their own trials rather than becoming testaments to educational virtue, if we do not act.


My frustration is not with the inherent good in people such as those who donate to the people in war-torn or destroyed nations. My frustration is with the lack of vision for our own community's infrastructures and for the future or our youth. If you believe that there is another way to solve the problems we face today, by all means, convince me. Knowing that the 100-plus students that walk through my door depend on me to pave the way for an otherwise (and still) uncertain future has hardened my into believing that a grass-roots movement towards educational support is the key. 


If you do not agree, talk to an eighth grade student about what they want to be when they grow up. If that does not persuade you, talk to one of my students and see if you feel differently. It isn't just our world or future for which we make decisions and which we ignore, it is the world of those yet too young to make a change on their own.