Education

Really, education isn't as bad as it seems.
True, teachers are not paid anything, to speak of.
True, politicians all attend private school so they have no concept of what public education looks like.
True, the population below the poverty line now exceeds fifty percent.
But we still have our ideals.  Students are interested in attending school for sixteen plus years in order to be more highly qualified to run that cash register report, place that obsolete book order or file your taxes. They are willing to defend our cities and extinguish flames for $7.25. After all, that is nearly double what I made as I worked my way through college.

No.
These kids aren't cynical, sarcastic, powerless, frustrated, entitled, spoiled.

Aarrrrgh!

I spent the last four days and several hundred dollars geting wonderful training to help my students succeed on AP tests.  Loved the class, presenter, participants, conversation. However, ultimately, I was left in a quandary. Is it ethical to teach high school kids that the world, generally, and the United States, specifically, is a place where their dreams can come true?

This "American Dream" seems to be fading fast. We work two or three jobs in my household. Have college degrees. My partner is edging toward fifty and on a third/fourth career. Still has twenty years to retirement and brings home maybe 5K more than twenty years ago.
I did the math to see how much money we needed in order to retire on something like sixty persent of what we make now and we would have to invest our entire incomes for the next twenty years in order to come close.  We started retirement accounts in our early twenties!  How does this make any sense?

Somehow a change has to come about. Someone has to realize that the poor can not continue to hold the rich on our backs. . . and it can't be congress . . . they are the ones we are sustaining.

It is discouraging.  As much time as I dedicate to my students, my family, my retirement, my world-- I seem to be slipping backward more quickly than I can step forward. It seems a little hopeless at times to set these kids up for that world.

Where did all my optimism go?