Can't Stress it Enough: The Importance of Education

This past week, I (finally) finished reading Three Cups of Tea, a book that has been on my t0-read shelf for a long time. It's a non-fiction story about a man named Greg Mortenson, who, after getting lost in Pakistan after a failed attempt to climb K2, is struck by the need in the small mountainous villages of Pakistan for schools. He promises to return to one village to build a school for them after raising the money, but from there a whole enterprise was born. Today, he and the Central Asia Institute founded by Mortenson and his supporters, build schools in small villages all over Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was incredibly moved by this story, and I'm sure if I had not just spent more than I care to admit on supplies for my own classroom, I would have gone online and donated to his cause without hesitation.

However, I was more struck by Mortenson's message in America after 9/11 and the War on Terror began. He suggests, and I agree, that we do not do anything to help our cause or create any more goodwill toward Americans in the Middle East by being involved in conflicts in which we deliberately or as a side-effect destroy whole villages, promising aid to help the people who we may have disrupted, and then never sending the aid. This only opens the way for terrorist organizations with lots of money to fill the void, especially in education, and thus taking advantage of the desire for education of many non-extremist locals. They build schools because the government of Afghanistan has not, and because our promise of aid for schools has not come through, and churn out more young men who have been educated with an extremist curriculum full of western hatred. Mortenson argues that only by making education a priority (albeit a long-term one) can we ever hope to stop this area from being a hotbed for terrorism for good. A NY Times article circulating among people I know on facebook made a similar argument about education, specifically of girls, in the Middle East. Education is the single-best way to improve a region like this, that desperately needs it.

I can't help but think that Mortenson's ideas ring true in our country as well (and if we're going to give money away to other governments for education, I certainly hope we get some here too). While poor schools in America may not breed terrorism, they certainly do not help to improve things such as the high crime rate in urban areas, or help to improve the number of people who are on government aid and thus contributing to the strain on the nation's resources, or any other number of unpleasant statistics. We have just spent time bailing out big industries all over the country, realized that we seriously need to overhaul things like the healthcare system and social security, and more, and I cannot help thinking that by pouring more money into all of these systems, we are only helping (if we are helping at all) in the short term. We need to educate all of the children in this nation if we truly want to make things better, and yet education never seems to be at the top of anyone's priorities. Certainly, it is up there for most politicians, but it rarely makes it into position number 1 on the list of concerns the government must handle-but it should. A good education for all students is really in all of our best interests, just like it would be in the Middle East.

And by the way, I highly recommend Three Cups of Tea. You should absolutely read it if you have the time.

The Students Are Coming! The Students Are Coming!

Well, it's now late August. My roommates have almost all returned, those of us who were here have played so many games of quizzo we may actually be sick of it now, Charlie's party is this weekend, and TFA has started weekly Thursday blasts again- all of which can only mean one thing: It's just about time for school to start again. And underneath the sadness that summer (and thus my lazy days of sleeping until 9am instead of 6am) is almost over, I keep feeling something weird, something unexpected. It took me a long time to put a finger on it, but I think I might be able to call that feeling...excitement?

Excitement was not the feeling I was expecting to feel on the eve of my second year of teaching. Not after last year's numerous bouts of crying, minor depression, anger, frustration, and general terror about the path I had chosen for the next two years. However, as I walked into my new classroom, having moved down the hall now that I am Duckrey's only social studies teacher (and my new classroom is bigger!), and as I begin working through my incentives and management plan and my unit plans for the beginning of this year, I'm finding that I am kind of looking forward to having students again. This year, hopefully at my mercy, rather than me being at theirs. I am excited to teach social studies, a subject which, in previous years, has been neglected and left to a teacher who seemed less-than interested in his subject, and to teach it so that my students can have as good a social studies education as I had (thank you, Mr. Traester), and so that they leave me with a much better sense of their world than they had before they entered my room this year.

So overall, I can seriously say, I'm ready to head back to the classroom. Well, almost. I still have to finish 3 unit plans, make 587 posters, and spend ridiculous amounts of money on classroom supplies... But after that, I will be ready to make this the best year it can be.