I’m angry.
No, I am blindingly furious right now. I usually do not
allow myself to get truly angry (no one can make you angry; it’s a choice).
Instead, I get irritated, I rant, I let off steam—then I like to get to work
solving problems; however, when I finally get incensed, I do not blaze; I become
cold and calculating. I aim for the heart and the deathblow.
I’m not the first #oklaed blogger to attempt to capture the
rage many of us currently feel. Recently, other educators like Rick Cobb, Rob
Miller, and Blue
Cereal dared
express their outrage at the people and circumstances responsible for the
travesties in Oklahoma. A publication I’ve never heard of before (The MiddleGround) responded with pablum,
telling the three bloggers, and #oklaed in general, to be polite and use
language inoffensive to the morons who caused our state’s myriad issues.
*I’m not including a link because I don’t want their hand
wringing, prissy nonsense to have more traffic
As a woman, I’ve been told to be kind, to not be aggressive,
to watch my mouth. You might as well wave a red flag in my face. Generally,
intelligent people choose expletives and diatribe when our honey won’t even
catch flies—or legislators. People raise their voices when others refuse to
hear polite conversation or when others refuse to enter into healthy discourse.
Then, we begin shouting and swearing, hoping something will filter through the
deliberate deafness and obtuseness. Curse words are not my default setting.
Knowing the three men, I doubt they simply cuss for fun (well, maybe BCE… J).
They are writers and revisers who pick their words with care. They know the
value of words, the power words can carry. Profanity shouldn’t be (and so far
hasn’t been) tossed around lightly when addressing a profoundly serious topic
like the complete defunding of our schools.
That is only one reason I’m angry. So, for those with
sensitive sensibilities, let me warn you: I’m not pulling any punches.
I’m as angry as a wounded animal and as vengeful as a
scorned woman; however, I am not the one wounded. Instead, I’m forced to stand politely
and quietly by while people I love suffer: my students. I’m expected to sit silently
while my elected leaders strip the rags hanging from the emaciated body of public
education and cast lots for those rags. If you aren’t familiar with that
allusion, try picturing our illustrious leaders as vultures circling the dying,
wasted body of public education, greedily eyeing the flesh. The body
determinedly crawls forward, crying for a drop of funding while the vultures avidly
wait for the last gasp so they can swoop in and rip what is left of the corpse
to shreds.
Now, imagine that corpse is your child. Oklahoma’s
government is slowly strangling the educational life from YOUR CHILD. This is
not a hyperbole. Our leaders actively refuse to tax those who can afford to be
taxed. They cheerfully and blindly continue digging Oklahoma’s grave--and
stubbornly and willfully refuse to make changes. We will all soon lie in that
grave, including your child and the state’s future.
As a writer and sometimes poet, I like to rely on imagery
and synesthesia to tell my story. To further this horror story, picture our personified
state lying on the operating table, hemorrhaging, yet Fallin and our leaders
think the state still has enough blood to donate it. They opened the artery and
have turned sightless eyes as the crimson flood pours from the state’s body.
Our leaders have become vampires. Not the sweet sparkly
kinds with perfect hair who make you feel all tingly inside. No, they are Dracula
incarnate or Lucy Westenra who joyfully and greedily sucked the blood from children
to satisfy her own needs. We see this in the form of ESA (voucher) bills,
school consolidation bills, bills discriminating against some of our
students…basically our leaders are attempting to do anything and everything
EXCEPT help create, fund, and nurture healthy public schools. Rather, they’re
sucking the life from our schools—and then blaming the victim for shriveling up
and dying.
I’m thoroughly sick of making do, of keeping a stiff upper
lip, of pulling myself up by my bootstraps, or smiling through the pain…and all
the other inane things a**holes say when they fake sympathy. Why should I have
to continue drawing a salary that falls below the poverty line—after a decade
of teaching? Why should I then continue buying supplies and classroom sets of
books with that same laughable salary? Why should I work a full day, then work
in the evenings and weekends—for free? Why should I continue being the state’s,
and nation’s, whipping boy every time America doesn’t measure up to other
countries on something as ludicrous as a standardized test?
At this point, platitudes and promises are nothing. Do not
beg for money to fix the Capitol so tourists can be impressed with a building.
Do not even go there when schools
are dimming lights and trying to scrape the bottom of nearly-empty barrels.
I guess tourists will be the only ones coming to this backward state—no
businesses are stupid enough to settle in a state “training” an illiterate
workforce…no matter how many tax cuts you pimp to them.
Also, Don’t tell me you’re planning on raises for teachers
because you understand how important we are. I have teacher friends working
second and third jobs and/or on welfare. The thought alone does
not count when we’re talking a living wage. I spit on your pretty words. I wipe
my feet on the trash pouring from your lying mouth. Yes, words can have power.
Your words do not; they are lumps of banality and vanity, designed to help
allay your conscience so you can sleep at night.
Sleep. Hmmm, that’s another thing I’m missing as I worry
about my students and their lives and how to prepare them for tests no one
cares about and how to try to make the rigidity of school actually apply to
their lives…but that’s a topic for another post.
Let me wrap this up by asking a few questions and leaving
you, dear reader, with a few ideas to ponder….
What good are the “best standards in the nation” when there
are no teachers to teach them or if the schools are empty? Of course, they
won’t be empty once Oklahoma’s leaders sell our schools and children to the
Waltons or Bill Gates or some other money grubbing Ed reformer for thirty
pieces of silver.
Education is the backbone of society. Without educated
citizens, Oklahoma’s future looks desolate, bleak, depressing, foreboding...fill
in your own appropriate synonym….
I’ll end with a lovely pithy saying for your next meme: Public
schools aren’t failing. Oklahoma’s leaders are failing the schools, your
children, and their future.