Laying Off Teachers Today is Very Bad For Tomorrow
July 23rd, 2010 Filed under: Economy — Economic Author
What do these numbers and words have in common?
23,225
16,000
>100,000
100
17
10.4%
17.5%
$6,000
220 and 65.2%
Texas Curriculum and the Canceled Prom
31,000 miles
Germany, Canada, France, Japan and Sweden
23,225 and 16,000
On Monday, March 15, 2010, California handed 23,225 teachers “possible” pink slips to public school teachers, indicating that it’s very likely their contracts will not be renewed for the 2010-2011 school year. If that isn’t staggering enough, we can add those numbers to the 16,000 teachers in California already laid off between 2008 and 2009.
>100,000
Statistics are conflicting, but somewhere in excess of 100,000 teachers have been laid off nationwide in the last five years. This is dependent upon whether you are reading local publications and adding the numbers yourself or taking the figures published in online newspapers and magazines with a national circulation (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc). If you are relying on the former, the numbers are far greater than what is being reported nationally.
100 and 17
100 school districts in 17 of the 50 states have opted for a 4-day school week. Colorado claims it was to allow children to participate in their favorite pastime of skiing. Perhaps this is so, but what of the other 5 months a year when there is no snow on the ground? And may I ask a stupid question? Since when is skiing more important than earning an education?
10.4 and 17.5%
The first number is the percentage being reported by the Department of Labor as representative of those unemployed. However, in reality it is closer to 17.5% given that once extensions are exhausted those still unemployed are no longer counted. Now that we can likely add 23,000 teachers to this number, that 1 in 5 unemployed nationally is rapidly closing in on 1 in 4.
$6,000 USD
This is the starting salary of an engineer with a Master’s Degree in India. No, this is not monthly income, but rather annual.
220 and 65.2%
The first number represents the number of Fortune 500 companies that are outsourcing jobs to India. It is important to understand the jobs being outsourced are not menial jobs but rather those of engineers, Information Systems (a.k.a. IT, IS) professionals, etc. When using the expression IT or IS, this is not referring to call centers only. This includes companies that outsource the high-level engineering, programming and extremely technical IS positions (such as that which my husband used to hold). These fortune 500 companies referred to in the 220 are located in The US, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Netherlands, South Korea, Switzerland, Canada and Sweden and account for 65.2% of the global economy.
Texas Curriculum and The Canceled Prom
The Texas School board, comprised not of teachers, but lawyers, publishers of text books and religious leaders in the community, succeeded in removing any mention of Thomas Jefferson, the Mexicans and Indians that lost their lives, alongside Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie in the Alamo, climate change, evolution and replacing these with John Calvin, Davy Crocket and Jim Bowie acting alone, Intelligent Design and the 2nd amendment of the Constitution. These textbooks are distributed not only in Texas but Arizona, Louisiana, New Mexico and Oklahoma.
While Texas and numerous other school districts in the US are concerned with ensuring Judeo-Christian ideals are taught over evolution and about whether it sends the wrong message to allow an 18-year old high school senior, about to enter college to allow her girlfriend to attend the high school prom, China and India are passing the US like the tortoise and the hare.
31,000 and Germany, Canada, France, Japan and Sweden
China is currently building the most extensive high-speed railway system in the world. Upon completion, it is expected to run along 31,000 miles of track, serving the entire country, including the outlining provinces. Engineers from Germany, Canada, France, Japan and Sweden were handpicked to serve on the design team. Their trains run in excess of speeds of 300 mph and are the fastest in the world. Countries with high-speed rail include:
Belgium
France
Germany
Japan
South Korea
Spain
Taiwan
The United Kingdom
Sweden
If anyone were to look at the antiquated Amtrak system, which at its fastest runs 150 mph, they need not question why the engineers sought to assist with the design of China’s high-speed railway system were from Canada, Germany, France, Japan and Sweden.
There was a time that American Engineers were the ones whose expertise was sought by other countries. This is no longer the case.
While the United States continues to debate whether climate change is happening, other countries such as China and India are looking at using clean coal in their power plants because they know that gas turbine power plants are more destructive to the planet.
Perhaps we could look to our future to produce more experts in the field of Engineering or other highly-technical fields but with fewer teachers teaching only four days a week, a curriculum based not on science and history but on religious doctrine, there seems little hope of this.
