Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Education: brought to you in part by Corporate America.

If you think the Federal Economy is in bad shape, you should check out the educational system. While every industry across the country runs out of money, I think we tend to forget that the educational system has a budget too, and as such it's well is running dry too. I know this more than most because several members of my family are teachers in Florida. I won't delve deep into the troubling fiscal issues affecting the sunshine states educational system, but I will say that by comparison, Bush didn't do that bad of job. I'll also say that the next time you decide to give your child's teacher a piece of your mind, you should remember consider that they most likely paid for a majority of the supplies the kids use out of their own pockets. Why? Because the schools refuse to give them the money they need to purchase the needed supplies. Why? Because there is no money. But these issues are not exclusive to my home state, they are national.

Which brings us to the topic at hand. Finally unable to pay for simple things like test and quizzes, Tom Farber, a calculus teacher from San Diego, California gone the way of Google. Google is free, and so are the tests and quizzes, and they are funded in the same ways now as well. To offset district budget cuts, Mr. Farber is selling ads on his tests and quizzes, much like the ads that make Google free. The ad cost scale is as follows: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final. In one weekend Farber received 75 e-mail requests for ads.

My usual reaction to something like this would be to write out some sarcastic quips that would be contemptuous and scornful to say the least with special emphasis on his being a corporate whore. However my "inside" knowledge as it were of how dire the situations is, has left me speechless. It's wrong, I know that, but what are you going to do? Not teach?

USA Today is running an article on the news. Also in the article are more dignified means for teachers to raise money for supplies.

1 comment:

Grey Matter said...

Dose this include College & Financial Aid?