Volunteering for Education

Met some PFT Colleagues on the campaign today. Tom Wolf promises to give money back to public schools when he becomes governor in Pennsylvania. I volunteered on a grassroots level to help his campaign and went door to door to talk to the community. The morning was beautiful today. We started canvasing at 10:00 am and ended at 12:00 noon.

Saving Philadelphia Schools “By Any Means Necessary”

The FDA requires a health warning for cigarette advertisements and cigarette packages because in the United States, Tobacco use is the foremost cause for preventative and premature death. The death rate from using Tobacco is 443,000 yearly while the cost to the economy for low productivity and medical expenses, are $200 billion dollars. The Tobacco Control Act requires that cigarette advertisements and cigarette packages have warnings placed on them. Nine different warnings from Tobacco smoke are mandated from the Tobacco Control Act including Tobacco smoke can harm your children, to Tobacco smoke can kill you.

Such irony is evident as the news finally came regarding Pennsylvania’s state lawmakers deciding to pass legislation for the purpose of generating the needed $90 million dollars for funding the school district. This announcement obviously brings relief to children, parents, teachers, and superintendents. According to Superintendent Hite, without passing the cigarette tax bill, the district would have had to lay off 1300 educators and delay opening schools for the fall.

Have we become a society willing to save our schools and economy, by any means necessary? I am a strong advocate of education and believe that if we will ever expect our children to develop robust character into adulthood, where they are able to positively impact society, then we as parents and leaders must begin to demonstrate that we do not compromise our values. Upholding unwavering character decisions, and values that will emphatically preserve society are what parents, leaders, and educators are supposed to represent. We are the elders who should have gained wisdom over the years. Drugs, gambling, Tobacco, Pornography and the like are not supposed to be what sustains a respectable society. If we have become so desperate, that we will use the convenience of dishonorable methods, then we have lost our focus as leaders. Surely, someone could have suggested a more respectable means to support our children. The packages say “Tobacco smoke can harm your children”, yet the decision to fund the education of the children comes from the selling of a product that harms our children. This is certainly mockery and although the financial need is being met, I believe parents and leaders should reconsider how our hearts have grown cold to the moral values we once had, as we once sought to protect our children and now, the” by any means necessary” rule is applied to the most important people in our world.

I want the children to know that they deserve better. They deserve a good education, but the means should first come as a result of strategic planning that upholds a moral value system so as to preserve our society. Prayer used to be important but has now been replaced with “by any means necessary”. If the schools will be healed and the children educated and prepared to thrive in this global economy, then we must find a way to return back to moral decision making. Unbridled decision making will ultimately lead to failure of our schools and failure of our society.