Schools that aren’t well funded will have difficulty engaging and educating children. We don’t have this problem, but I charge that it’s our job to help provide this same level of funding to all schools, even outside of Clark County.
The first victim of a low budget is the extracurricular activities and hands-on exercises. This reduces school to boring textbooks, exams and lectures, and it’s no wonder test scores don’t improve. You can’t teach to people who don’t want to learn; we need to excite the students and ignite their curiosity, and this is cheaper than ever to do. Tools, computers and educational kits are dirt cheap. Many companies give away professional-grade software for free. Even $100 per class can often get real learning tools in the hands of students.
I volunteer at a high school that can afford to provide these opportunities, and the result is brilliant and enthusiastic students. If we could help provide even a fraction of these tools to other areas, the whole country, us included, will benefit. That’s worth a few dollars off our paychecks.
Dan Sheadel
Vancouver
