Are they going to learn what I learned?

One topic that really catches my attention is education for the fact that I want to teach. I am actually studying to be a history teacher for grades 8-12. I believe that we all need history in order to learn from our past and implement what we learn towards the future. I was really concerned when reading the article Exclusive: Texas Textbook Wars Would Affect All of Our Nation’s Students in Family Security Matters written by The Editors. The article talks about how History Textbooks are going under dramatic changes about what is going to be written in them and what is going to be omitted.  The changes are considering to be over ; the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Civil Rights movement, the Cold War, Reconstruction and the Great Depression. I have to say that I totally disagree with this idea. We should all learn and have knowledge of what our great Nation has been through and be proud to say we have been able to recover from the worst case scenarios. I want to be able to teach everything that has happened in the past without leaving anything behind. All the subjects that are being debated were crucial to our forming and form part of what we Americans are.

On top of my educational preferences I am a parent. As a parent I would like for my child to learn History as it was and not as certain groups would want them too. I would like for my child to learn that Christopher Columbus was not who discovered America, as I was taught, but Indians that already had settled lives in this land.  Personally I am really concerned with this issue and hope that it comes to a good ending or more that one are going to be upset. We need o learn and teach EVERYTHING from the past.

Peers and Opinions/ Cutting the education budget

As reading this post I was so interested and totally agree with her opinion and points. Rebeca has allot of strong points and good examples. She provided us with the amount of money that is though to be the total cut, which is alarming! She also has the consequences of the short fall like it is to have 40 kids in a classroom and the use of old textbooks, which sets Texas back. Her concern for the community is real honest and I really liked that. I would have wanted to see a bit more writing and for her to go deeper on what some educators think of the budget short fall and what measures they can take and to explain her point of view a bit more. Over all I liked the information. :)

Going deeper on the subject and my point of view:

Just like Rebeca, I personally feel a concern because I am currently studying to graduate in the field of education to become a History/Government teacher and have a daughter that in a couple of years will need to attend school. I would hate to go through these four years of school studying something that I love and not be able to obtain a job. Education to me is very important and do not understand how our representatives expect teachers to give a high quality education and students to learn the material on an extremely short budget. I as a parent want my daughter to get an excellent education that will set her intellect standards high. We all need to understand that in order to become a better state we need communities with the best education.

My mother in law and I were talking about this subject over the week end, because she had just come back from a meeting with officials from the board of education for the county of Travis. She work for an elementary and the meeting consisted of making the teachers aware of certain changes that were going to occur next school years; budget cuts, employment reduction and a possible change in the school year classes. Teachers were told to save on what they could, this included copies, text books, supplies and to take care of items that could be reusable.

We all know the budget cut is coming, and not much could be done to avoid it. One good thing would be for our representatives to sit down and brainstorm of ideas of were to do the cut instead of education and health care because they would definitely hurt our future.