A political post

Sigh. I'm so against discussing politics. About 50% of the people in my life are from each demographic and it's just better to not discuss them. Some people I think don't even know what party I'm affiliated with, lol. I'm a closet activist I guesss.

But this discussion has been going on in my head and I'm just going to "put it out there".

A local politician stopped by while my husband was home and I was out with the kids.  He told her that he's not registered to vote to which she replied, "you should register! Unless you are not going to vote for me, then maybe you shouldn't!" which is probably a joke, but you know what? If you think you are awesome to get elected, I don't think you should be scared of people voting against you. I think you should be advocating voter registration because it's one of the great freedoms of the US.

But I digress from what's been going through my head...

She told the hubby that she's a former teacher  and she supported giving teachers pay raises or bonuses based on their students getting high test scores because they all just use calculators and don't know how to get an answer.

Do you know why there's a debate going on in my head?

1) wow, I did not realize that teachers became teachers to get rich!  That's really eye opening that money would be a great motivator to teachers.

2) The reason kids today are so Fing (sorry) stupid and can't think for themselves is because there's so much pressure to teach them to pass a stupid test rather than think for themselves. Think I'm wrong? Have you noticed a true lack of common sense in the world lately?  I think a lot of this is due to standardized testing.

3) Maybe if the party that this particular person was associated with worried more about the root of poor student academics, like students who go home to empty houses where everyone's working their tail off because they don't have a living wage because they have no access to higher education and are too busy starving in class because they can't get the food help their family needs to be able to even concentrate they might do better in schools. Let's concentrate on that rather than blaming the teachers. I understand the "up by your bootstraps" mentality, but that's for the parents.  These kids have no bootstraps to grab on to. 

Someone recently posted this article on Facebook about how students in Finland are amazingly successful. The article pinpointed a few things. 1) teachers there are well paid and treated in high esteem (kind of the opposite of the US) 2) the country is highly socialized and takes care of all it's citizens so that they are in a better position to learn.  Wow, makes sense, right?

So... this is the debate that raged in my head while doing some painting. Just putting it out there.