Letter to the Editor By Dean W. Pettit retired teacher Racine

I’m convinced that public education is the first line of defense for our entire culture. In addition, well-paid, respected, and unionized teachers are the heart and soul of the American teaching profession. I’ll explain why I think these things.

I spend a lot of my retired time teaching in the country of Chile. Their public education system was allowed to nearly fade away during a long period of under funding of teacher salaries, school building, and maintenance. Union power was reduced which took away from teachers their previous ability to insist upon change and improvement in the public schools.

Recently, Chile has been trying to pump new blood into their public school system to bring it to life again. The overdue repair job isn’t working very well. What we would call their “school board” is learning too late that it costs more to recreate a school district than to maintain it.

Chile was in a period of civil insurgency beginning in 1973 which resulted in a long-term dictatorship. (It is becoming more democratic each year, and President Frey is the second President of Chile, freely elected in this decade.) With governmental problems in the 1970's, it was considered a good idea after 1973 to save money by cutting public school funding. (Chile has a national school system which is administered from the central government, as in France.)

One of the first cuts was teacher salaries. Still, at this time, teachers are paid so little that most young people who wish to enter a profession choose one other than teaching. Why become a teacher if it means you won’t be able to support a family, be able to send your own kids to the university, or even be required by personal economics to live in your parents home after you get married? Because of this very real financial situation, many students between high school and university age choose to go into business, civil engineering, medicine, computer programming, agricultural science, psychology, etc., rather than take a lifetime pay cut necessary if they go into teaching.

With the constant bickering here between school boards and teachers over living wages, I see the same thing happening here. Should our best young people go into teaching when they know they won’t be given the same respect and bargaining conditions as other unionized employees?

How would you advise your child if he or she wanted to go into education? Would you want them to go into a field which -- though it is the foundation of all others - - lacks respect in our society?

Would you want him or her to spend the next thirty or thirty-five years at a job which is constantly under attack by the governor and legislature of the state up to the point where specific legislation has been passed to deny them the right to withhold their labor -- to strike -- a right held by almost all other Americans?

And how about you, yourself? Would you like a job in which a state law has been passed forcing you to accept a salary increase which does not even come up to the current cost-of-living? If you wouldn’t like such conditions, why would you want a son or daughter you loved to endure such unfair conditions?

My wife and I had a similar situation in Chili. Her youngest boy wanted to become a math teacher.

As a high school student in Chili, he sometimes earned extra money tutoring university students in some of their higher math courses. He loved teaching, and his ability to learn and teach the subject area gave him great satisfaction. So he wanted to become a math teacher. Both his mother and I used all our abilities to guide him to a different choice. He would never be able to have a full and comfortable life as a teacher in Chile. The salary would be low and struggles to gain living wages would always be long, difficult and constant. He took our advice.

Now he is more than half-way through his alternative choice of civil engineering. His life will be easier because of his choice. Sadly, the students he will now never have will be forever without the benefit of his love of math and learning. They will never know what they’ve missed.

The people of Chile regret what they’ve done to their public schools but now it’s nearly too late to do much about it. People with money patronize private schools, and everyone pays less for the diminished public schools. Parents who wish entry to a private school are interviewed by the personnel in charge to decide if the child will or won’t be admitted. In some cases, national descent, religion of the family or prior grade average, “illegitimacy” or separated parents are reasons for inadmissibility. As with everything, money is a major determiner. As you can see, private schools always make their own rules for admittance and attendance.

Private schools in Chile pay teachers better, have more comfortable classrooms and superior learning facilities in all aspects of learning. Families with too little money to attend the private school of their choice are left with their only other possibility: a public school with underpaid teachers and inadequate school facilities.

Perhaps the above is what those in power really wish. They want to destroy the public school system. They want private schools of only a certain race, creed, or color. If this is their goal, they’re going about it in the right way. They are killing the desire of the young to enter a profession which I hold to be the defense and foundation of all the others. Our public school system works to maintain dignity and the right to learn of even the poorest, if they can be properly guided to know the importance of learning. Truthfully, we should not advise young people we love to enter a profession where dignity, respect and salary benefits are all being cut. They will be constantly faced with no-nothing school board members and citizens who consider teaching and teachers among the most lowly valued of all professions.

Even though teachers know best what schools and students need, even though they work under unfair labor laws created to hurt them, even though state laws make it almost impossible to control discipline problems, even though I love teaching, and I am pleased and proud to be called a teacher, I would and already have advised by stepson to not become a teacher. How sad for my profession. How sad for us all.

American public schools have been working to educate all young people in our country attending public schools for a long time. We have been unionized, free citizens teaching all young people who come to us how to function best in a free, democratic society. And we have been doing a wonderful job. Would you want anything else?

Comparison countries which show American public schools don’t always do a perfect job are those which allow only a portion of their young people to go to public schools. American teachers have been moving through a period of advancing technology, racial trauma, and negative attacks by those who would destroy a good system. Meanwhile we do a wonderful job.

Please don’t throw away one of our country’s proudest creations: a good, national system of free, public education for all. Don’t kill what you can’t bring to life again.

The wonderful country of Chile is struggling, toward their democracy. We could learn from them that it is fairly easy to kill public schools. It is very difficult, maybe impossible to rebuild them.

Posted March 19, 1998