On the recordMay 5, 2011
I wish to talk about teachers. In my State, the legislature just passed something called SB 5, and the Governor in Ohio signed it. It was a direct assault in many ways on the teaching profession. The discussions I hear from conservative politicians and their allies in the media--and they have many on editorial boards, especially in central Ohio--and the lack of respect they show for people who choose to teach as a profession is mind-boggling. We trust our children to teachers, yet we attack them--or too many politicians attack them. I am going to make it personal. I am going to start with my mom. My mom was a high school English teacher born in Mansfield, GA, in 1920. She taught in the era of segregation in Florida and Georgia. Raising my two older brothers and me in Mansfield, OH--she met my dad coming back from World War II, ending up in another Mansfield at the end of the war--she taught in an era of a growing American middle class. Like teachers throughout our history, she taught her students and her sons that education is a gateway to opportunity, that it can integrate a segregated nation and create a prosperous nation.…
