Low Wages and Theft: Essay based on Film “Bad Education”
Frank, a school superintendent, just caught as theft of a public school fund by a student-journalist that truly see the finance reports and clarify it to the tenders.
Frank just arrived at the office and found out that the FBI had just come to audit the school’s public report. He got a panic attack, confused by the “attack”, and go straight into his office room. Open the door with a bucket of sweat, a mother and her son have been waiting there.
This is a boy that just failed in an accelerated class, and want to ask Frank, School’s Superintendant, to permit him re-do the class. He is a third grader that tries to survive in a fifth-grade class. His mother gives made-up reasons, while her kids just nodding and saying yes to the mother’s points. This was the second time it happens, so to make it be more acceptable, the kid writes a letter that addressed Frank.
His mother asks him to read it out loud in front of Frank. The kid read it till he arrives in the word “accelerate” where he can’t pronounce it. Her mother gives him a little assistance on that word, but the kid repeatedly can’t pronounce it. Frank, as an ex-English Teacher, tries to assist the Kid, over and over. But his tongue still slips and can’t process that word.
Then, Frank asks the Kid, to imagine. That he is an Indy-500 racer, which has got the first position, and all of the enemies are trying to rush him out. In order to win, he should push the gas harder than ever, so the car can start to accelerate faster. Frank tells this story to the kid in an aggressive-but-imaginative way, make the kid and his mom stunned but confuse.
What is your problem?
My problem is you, who trot their children out like racehorses of Belmont. Who derives some perverse joy out of treating us like low-level service reps. I mean, do you remember the teachers who sat with you, who held you by the hand, who taught you to add-
No
and subtract, or showed you gatsby, and Mockingbird. Does their name escape you? Are their faces a blur? You don’t want to see us as people because that was inconvenient for you, you just leave us behind at will, never think about us again, you might forget but we don’t. We never forget, never.
This point of this movie gives me a sense of what happens to teachers nowadays. Parents always ask for a high-level education — in their mind — without even concerned with the teacher’s life-being. In a mere way, We called it as the unsung heroes.
Frank used tax-payer money, but he simultaneously makes the school become the fourth public school in America. It gives me a dilemma, does this problem can be treated as a low-waging effect too?
My dilemma concern to see this problem as a starting event for every teacher to set a point. If the nation wants a competitive education, minimally pay the people that manage it, wisely. The public school fund is high but all of them have to be put to facilities. Every teacher has to start a march for it, that this kind of things potentially happen in every school across America, and not because of the greedy human being, but a human that feel the imbalance of what they were asked to do — and what they actually do — with the wages they got.
In one of the beginning scenes, Frank and Pam, The Superintendent and The Assistant were talking about how many the president of the public school, Bob, earn every year, they were approximating it was about seven figures. They keep laughing and seem to accept those kinds of imbalance (yeah, they were a theft). This point was brought up again when Bob asked Frank to resign and admit his fallacy. Frank said that with what he had performed, he was suitable to work in Wall Street. And work in the education industry to fulfill his love to teach. And even he makes the school become the fourth public school in America, with teacher wages. He was making a point that collusion that he made had been paid with his work that his earnings would never enough to return it.
This is a point that has a powerful meaning. Simply, pay the people with a number that shows people demand on them.
