Dear Teachers:
Today you will start yet another year helping to fulfill one of the most ambitious ideas ever thought: that of a universal, public education. We have decided that the ideals of democracy demands that we educate everyone. So when you open your doors today, that exactly who you will take in: everyone.
In your classrooms will be kids whose parents hold PhDs and kids whose parents have never read them a single book. You’ll be teaching well-adjusted, goal-oriented kids and kids who have never known a stable home environment. A growing number of your younger students will not be fluent in the English language. In many of your schools, over 50% of them will be on free and reduced lunch. In fact, some of those kids are so hungry that you’ll work to find food to send home with them so that they can eat over the weekend. Some of your kids will find school to be the safest place all week, respite from a daily dose of family violence and dysfunction.
We are sending you our best and we are sending you our most challenged. And your task is to reach them all. You are, after all, a teacher and this is the most noble of vocations.
Our society and its leaders quite frequently forget the charge we have given you. You know by now to get prepared for the barrage of criticism that will come your way from inept politicians, arrogant businessmen, and impatient parents who have forgotten that they charged you to educate everyone. They’ll start talking the foolish talk of accountability, standards, tests, and running schools like a business. And this foolishness inevitably becomes law and threatens to turn the art of education into robotic activity, demoralizing both you and your students.
You continue undeterred with the knowledge that you occupy the most subversive profession on earth: an educator of youth. It is you, not the bumbling leaders of our day, who have the power to change the world. You are entrusted with the transmission of the greatest ideas of civilization to the next generation. The difference between barbarism and civilization and the very reason we choose the latter over the former is quite literally being worked out in our nation’s classrooms every day.
When we conceived of the idea of a universal, public education, we did so with the crazy idea that no matter who came into your classroom and no matter their background, each of those kids has an enormous amount of potential that can be realized because of the work that you do.
Your job is immense and we need you desperately. Thanks for changing the world this year, one kid at a time. Have a great school year!