Teaching ate me alive

[hunter]

11. I couldn't do it. I tried teaching in the city.

It took everything I had to give. I used to sweep my classroom at the end of the day, not because the custodians wouldn't do it, but because the classroom was empty and quiet and I needed to decompress and get my head together before I went out in public, before I got in my car and drove home.

Otherwise I might have been Mr. Road Rage, or Mr. distracted driver replaying all the dramas of the day in my head, no resolution possible.

Our upper classes starve the schools, starve the people, and then when the people become angry and their communities dysfunctional the upper classes blame the people for that hunger and dysfunction, and they propose "solutions" like privatization that will only suck more money and vitality from the communities they are starving.

More money will fix the schools. Pay students from within the community to go to college and become teachers. Make classes smaller, provide free breakfast and lunches, support communities with a generous welfare system and well paying jobs. Make schools a nice place to be, a kind of oasis of safety and sanity in communities that are rough.

We could do it. We could flip our tax system so that property taxes paid for the "common defense" and income taxes paid for education. Wouldn't that work well -- let the guy with the million dollar house pay for useless aircraft carriers. We could raise the minimum wage. We could create good government jobs in places where the private sector has failed the people.

The money people created this problem. It's stupid to pay any attention at all to their proposed solutions.