Published Sept. 7, 2003 in the Hibbing Daily Tribune
It’s back-to-school time across the Iron Range. For students and teachers, it’s a time of new beginnings. Unfortunately, those new beginnings seem to keep getting more difficult every time September rolls around.
Students in local schools face an educational landscape that offers fewer options than those of their older brothers and sisters. Budget cuts due to declining enrollment and new funding structures have forced area districts, including those in Hibbing and Chisholm, to slash programs and teacher positions. Class sizes are larger. Class offerings are smaller.
That means that students have fewer advanced classes, specialized classes and extracurricular activities, some of which are just as educational as time in the classroom.
It’s bad enough that the Iron Range, which has long been home to a quality educational system, has to deal with this issue. But it’s not just a local issue. In parts of the country that do not face declining enrollment, teachers are still being told to educate more students with fewer resources. The first casualties in this conflict are almost always programs like music, physical education and vocational skills. According to an Associated Press story released last month, even some affluent suburban districts in fast-growing school districts are cutting music and gym because they can’t afford them.
Why can’t the entire educational system of the most prosperous nation on earth effectively expose students to advanced studies or the fine arts? Why can’t the United States, which faces a crisis of obesity and poor health in young people, inspire lifelong physical activity through gym classes? If education is so important, why does it always seem to be in a state of financial crisis?
It can’t all be blamed on a poor economy or the war on terrorism. Sure, those things drained immediate funds, but this unbalanced funding structure in many of our nation’s schools dates back to the giddy economic boom of the 1990s.
In truth there is no legitimate excuse for not having a globally competitive education system, except that we are unwilling to pay for it.
Foreign languages, music programs, gym and the wide variety of extra-curricular activities available to students are indeed extras not required by law. But those “extras” separate great schools from adequate schools. Those “extras” make a region’s schools seem appealing to potential new residents, rather than a detriment. Those extras show students how to take the three all-important “R’s” of reading, writing and arithmetic and use them in the real world.
Now, more than ever, we need the leaders of tomorrow to think critically and engage creativity. They are less likely to do that if they are shortchanged as the students of today.
It’s easy for some to point fingers and say the problem is that teachers make too much or that schools are wasteful. While all systems can be made more efficient, and there are some bad teachers working in this country, solving those problems alone will not address the greater issue. Fundamentally, America must commit to quality education as a national goal, not unlike the Apollo moon missions, the Cold War or even the current war on global terrorism. In more ways than one, education is just as important.
Providing equal access to quality education is expensive, just like building bridges and maintaining national security.
People say they want good education, but then balk when the bill comes. Good schools cost money. Good schools require community involvement in their operation. You can and should stretch public dollars as far as they will go, but we’ve reached the breaking point in American public education.
This may sound like a major national issue, out of the reach of Iron Rangers like us, but that’s not true. Education in the United States starts locally and expands from there. It starts with what parents, community members, local teachers and students do right in our own town’s school.
With a new academic year upon us, ask yourself what can you do to make schools better this year, or next. If you’re tired of all the teacher layoffs and diminished options, try to think of ways to change the downward trend.
Get involved. The future does indeed depend upon it.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for The Daily Tribune.