From the day most kids start school, there is always one mantra tattooed into their little minds which remains with them through their teen years and into adulthood,“School is important. Get your education.”
This idea does not stop with family members spouting the mantra annoyingly whenever they can, but also teachers students meet every step of the way.
If school is important and getting an education is important, should the way we receive our education and the materials we need for it be important, too? Or is what little funding given to us the best we are going to get for funding our education?
What began as a walkout by teachers in areas all over Oklahoma to fight for more student funding has now turned into a march spanning 116 miles from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Oklahoma City. The protest of the walkout itself is a debacle for some.
Oklahoma’s own governor Mary Fallin believes all the school administrators want is a pay raise. Just recently, Fallin signed a bill stating a “ballot measure requires a seventy-five-per-cent supermajority in the legislature, or a public vote, to pass any tax increase.”
In addition, according to Andrea DenHoed of The New Yorker, Fallin also stated, “I hope they can come and say ‘thank you’ on Monday and go back to the classrooms.”
However, I believe those who fight against this protest have not seen the troubles many of these schools go through firsthand. I was a resident of Oklahoma for four years and attended four different schools while I was there. Materials such as books, chairs, tables and buildings, in general, seemed obsolete, and we students accepted the fact it would continue to stay the same and not experience any changes.
I have no hate for the Oklahoma school system. I did not realize how bad things were while I was in Oklahoma until I moved back home to Texas, and stood in front of my new high school. I remember being daunted by the colorful and large building, wondering if my mom made a mistake and accidentally dropped me off at a university. There was no way the multitude of kids who walked through the doors all went there.
I remember going to a computer class and seeing Apple’s Mac desktops throughout the classroom, and gawked at the teacher who also had one on her desk. My parents together could not afford even one desktop, let alone a Mac. I then walked in a trance to my English class, and asked my teacher if I needed to buy a book cover for the textbook and she asked me why I would need a cover for a book.
I also had a U.S. history teacher yell at me for wanting to share a textbook with a classmate who sat next to me during an open book quiz, because I did not ask him for one. He said he would order one and the next day he placed a brand new textbook on my desk.
I suddenly knew why I did not need a book cover, because the binding on this book was intact and the cover was not ripped off. There were not any missing pages where previous students had written the information from other books onto a notebook paper and placed it where the missing page was. I no longer needed to hide the fact all my books were not in great shape, accepting the fact it was the best I was going to get.
In addition to firsthand experience, few may know Oklahoma cut their spending for students down to 30 percent in the past 10 years. According to Moriah Balingit of The Washington Post, spending averages about $8,000 per student where the national average is around $12,000. It is also found that many schools are perfectly fine with being open four days a week, as opposed to the average five almost everywhere else. Raising the teacher’s pay is not going to make a difference, as what little they do make goes back to the classrooms.
The countless teachers I encountered during my schooling in Oklahoma made our education their goal, whether by bringing their own electronics to class like TVs and radios, or buying our supplies when there were kids in need of them. They offered what they could and more, many even bought food for those who could not afford to eat, or gave rides to those who did not have one.
Teachers in general are super heroes, and their fight for kids is not for the money. They fight for the children who want to be something in the world, and are being told, “School is important. Get your education.”
School is important, I do not doubt it, but this movement is important, too, and more people need to see this.