| Does the public deserve the efforts that teachers make? |
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“The fact that the big brother school system is telling parents what they can and cannot feed their children is just the beginning of a trend that, if left unchecked, may take away our right to choose what we eat.” (When it comes to food, Truitt is pro choice; Hoosier Ag Today; page 4, April 27, 2011.)
This is Gary Truitt in his Rush Limbaugh mode as one more conservative Republican implying that public school teachers are felony offenders.
In the spring of 1960, my third of 42 years of teaching in our local schools, I hired a troubled seventh grader from my basketball team to shovel hog pens beside me and eat his lunch in our home on Saturdays. His behavior improved, but when school was out, I left for grad school and my father hired someone else for the summer.
My wife and I were married in late August, and by the time I got back to “James,” he was lost. His father sold a load of hogs that fall, and “James” and his high school freshman cousin, “James,” killed him and threw his body in a stripper pit dump and took off.
By the time they were caught, and then caught again after they escaped, my city girl bride was quite accepting of the need for a loaded shotgun beside the bed. I never felt in danger, but precautions can’t hurt.
In 1981, after 16 years as middle school principal, I asked to return to high school teaching, and was assigned the health/sex education classes.
In the 10 years I taught it, only one of more than 1,000 sophomores opted out of the sex education weeks of the semester.
At the end of the third year, my county family planning nurse colleague received a letter of commendation when the number of premature pregnancies in the school district dropped from 27 in 1979-80 to two (and stayed under five until state regulations said my guidance license didn’t qualify me to teach health.) Melissa Hart’s column is critical of that kind of program. (All parents should be more involved with school policies; Truth from the Trenches; page 4B, April 27, 2011.)
Two of my former students are incarcerated for murder now (not “James” and “James”), and every week in the local paper I read of the criminal acts of some of my failures as a teacher.
Unlike a private school, we could exclude no one and even with “big brother” power, we couldn’t make Navy Seals (as two of my better students have served) out of them. One of my elementary principal colleagues used to say of his worst problems, “if we can just keep them from committing felonies, we are very successful educators.”
I never earned as much as my friends at Alcoa, though as coach and principal I spent more hours on the job in a year than they did. Then and now, the salaries of most teachers would qualify them for one of the vouchers that will dismantle public education.
But by frugal living (no inheritance, my father is 100), my wife and I bought the home and four other small tracts to total 190 acres. We still have a yard full of 4-Hers every summer training cattle, sheep and dogs, but when the state cut my teacher’s pension by $47 per month in January, we had to ask, “Does the public really deserve all we’ve given?”
We wonder what conservative Republicans inspired by Truitt, Hart and others will do to us next.
Sincerely,
Neal Thomas
Hooppole Valley Farm
Richland, Ind. |
| 6/2/2011 |
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