Back To School

I am a teacher and after some time off, I go back to school tomorrow. I, along with my colleagues will do our best to instill knowledge and information in our students in an effort to best prepare them for the future. I teach Economics and Government and when I meet my students in a few days, their heads will not be filled with the basic knowledge that they will need to arm themselves for future success. They will not know the names of their representatives, nor will they understand why the nation is in economic distress. They will lack the basic knowledge of why the rights they take for granted are rights they have at all. They will not know the functions of the various branches of government, how to get accurate information from the media, how decisions they and their families make are tied to the economy and why their futures are so tied to having such information. I will work my butt off to insure that these lapses of knowledge are corrected and that I can help to arm them with the skill sets they will need to be ready to tackle the future. It is a challenge for all teachers, to prepare our youth for the daunting challenges that lie ahead. Regrettably all across our great nation, students are not prepared. Our politicians love to say they support education, but instead, they prey on the ignorant, promote an absence of the truth and tacitly encourage such ignorance in the name of re-election. This is a very sad state of affairs and must be changed. For anyone that has the opportunity to influence a young mind, please make sure that you demand educational excellence from each young person that you interact with. Make sure to help them find truth and to honestly explore both sides of an issue before making a judgement. Most of all, teach them not to solely listen to what their representative in government says. If they do, without checking the facts and without checking the backgrounds and performance of these officials, they will fail to understand the truth, be influenced incorrectly and make bad decisions for themselves and for their futures. Where are you Americans for reason and truth?