First thing's first, I'm moving to Milwaukee, which is why when I saw that on the side of CNN's website an article about the Milwaukee Public Schools laying off more than 300 teachers, my interest was piqued.
That quickly turned into annoyance. I frequently see some politician lamenting on television or on Twitter or in some article about how upset they are about our public schools, how the United States are low on worldwide educational performance lists, how our kids aren't doing well and aren't learning. But how can you be upset when you take money away from the education budget to give to the prison industrial complex, refuse to make our kids whole and well-rounded beings by cutting arts education, by laying off and firing teachers because you can't afford to keep them, by thinking the best way for kids to learn is by shading in a goddamn circle on a standardized test?
As much talking as all these politicians are doing and have done for years, there has been no real progress Hardly anyone in office is fighting for education, for teachers, for districts, and--most importantly--for students. And when this fighting isn't happening, when education isn't high on politicians' priority list our schools are going to continue to fail. Our students are going to continue to fail. Our country is going to continue to fail. And we'll continue to get ridiculous fools in office who don't understand how education works and continue to think that performance on standardized tests indicates intelligence.
It's ridiculous. I want more. I want reform. We need reform. And it needs to happen now.
I tell you what I'm sick of. All this "share the sacrifice" bullshit our corrupt politicians keep force-feeding us. Our millionaires and billionaires are obviously suffering so much, you know, these kids just gotta suck up and realize that life just isn't fair all the time and Bill Gates really understands their pain too. Shared sacrifice kids. C'mon.
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