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© St. Petersburg Times, published March 10, 2002
A national emergency has been identified, and the president has ordered that several hundred million dollars in the federal budget be diverted to personnel to meet this enormous challenge.
The crisis is in national security, specifically airline safety, and the citizens largely approve of this prudent move. Few would argue that this is a worthy use of their tax dollars.
Just imagine, however, if we took the same bold action to correct an even bigger threat to our nation's future. Suppose our leaders for once actually did something meaningful to improve our system of education.
Yeah, I know. It's pretty far-fetched.
Last week, the first steps were taken to begin hiring a new force of security workers for the nation's airports. A Minnesota company won a $103-million contract to find, test and hire the new workers, who will be federal employees.
They will not need to have college degrees, their only training being 40 hours in the classroom and 60 hours on the job. The screeners will be paid between $23,600 and $40,700, not including a benefits package.
While that was happening in Washington, here in Citrus County, our public school teachers were going through their annual humiliation of negotiating a contract with the school district. Despite the obvious good that teachers do day in and day out, each year they must sell themselves again to their employers who, under the bargaining system, must find ways to discount their value.
Under their current contract, a starting teacher in Citrus is paid $26,000. That's just slightly more than we will pay someone to stand next to a whiz-bang scanning machine at an airport gate.
Some of the new screeners will be paid upwards of $40,000. In Citrus County, a tenured teacher with a bachelor's degree must work 16 years to reach that level.
No one is saying that the new security jobs aren't important. On Sept. 11, we all learned the cost of letting down our vigilance. Improving security measures has been long overdue.
Why, however, can't our elected officials comprehend that education is so much more vital to the future of our country? We have an "education president" and "education governor," the Brothers Bush, who are determined to make the rich richer while bleeding the poor and middle class. What is it going to take to get them to give more than lip service to the needs of our schools?
Why aren't more citizens outraged at the way we treat our teachers, making them second-class citizens in this country while in truly advanced civilizations, they are held in the highest esteem?
Suppose that you are a young person leaving high school and considering your career options. You could become a teacher, which would mean at least four years of college, various internships and certifications as well as required continuing education to stay current in your field.
You could then move into a job where you are expected to teach more than just the three R's, somehow you are now responsible for teaching all manner of social and coping skills to kids from every variation of home life under the sun. And if a problem arises, you can expect to have angry parents in your face in a heartbeat.
All of this for $26,000.
Or, you could become an airline security guard. That only means a week of schooling.
You can work in a climate-controlled building watching people pass before you on their way to somewhere else. The new-fangled machines around you are expected to do the serious work of checking for weapons and other dangers. Occasionally, you might have to get out of your chair to wave a metal detector over some weary traveler.
And if a problem arises, you have the comfort of knowing that you are a federal employee. You can retreat into anonymity as just another nameless, untouchable civil servant.
Just as our security lapses didn't happen overnight, our lack of respect for educators has taken a long time to develop. It took Sept. 11 to jolt us out of complacency and force us to fix a glaring problem. Will it take another such cataclysmic event for us to begin taking education seriously?