Guest Commentary: What would Pythagoras have done?
By Tammy McDonnell– guest commentary
I am enrolled in a Western Civilization class at Mendocino College. Just now we are learning about the early Greeks; Socrates, Plato and Pythagoras. Words, philosophy and history are the magic keys which unlock my thirst for knowledge. My instructor makes the subjects he teaches come alive. I hope he is well compensated for his level of education and ability. The fee waivers and grants that make it possible for me to be there are privileges for which I am grateful. I am aware that no one owes me a college education.
Everyone has to earn a living, pay taxes, and as Dr. Zhivago says in the novel of that name, “just live.” I live on an extremely tight budget, but one thing I enjoy doing is thinking. It costs nothing. Some of the best times of my adult life have been spent in quiet reverie contemplating the universe and all that jazz, just as I did when I was a child. I don”t think kids lie in the grass and ponder so much anymore. Somehow they have lost their internal locus of control.
I teach pre-school and I am well aware of just how many parents of pre-school age children receive subsidized childcare. A huge percentage of the population under the age of 5 are, in effect, wards of the state. And the state is hardly in a position to take them all on.
In order for state pre-schools to get the funding they need to stay open they must meet criteria as determined by the corporate state and everything must be documented in order to keep the wheels of bureaucracy turning. The person who does all that paperwork quite often holds a higher paying position than the so called ?teacher”. It is my opinion that pre-school teachers are too often little more than the state”s underpaid babysitter. Yet, we are required to have a college education. We must keep our CPR certification current, which I pay for myself, as well as fingerprinting and criminal background checks, which do not always transfer from site to site. I have received stipends now and then, but in order to be eligible for one I am required to continue my education.
Other than proof of income eligibility, there is little required of the parents who wish to place their child in these programs. Parents nowadays don”t even have to pack their kids a lunch anymore. Breakfast is free. Lunch is free. Snacks are free. And the kids are dumping most of it in the trash! I receive less compensation to teach these kids than what a lot of parents make who are benefitting from subsidized childcare, housing, medical and dental. Still, I hope I”m enriching the lives of these kids in some small way.
I”m thinking Pythagoras had only to worry about closing his doors if he did not receive payment for his services. I”m thinking the pupils themselves had criteria they must meet before they were accepted into his schools. And, somehow I don”t think the citizens of Athens were shouting “Pythagoras for all!” Parents nowadays know their rights. I have seen too many of them storm into the childcare setting, disruptive, using foul language and demanding those rights.
I imagine that when Pythagoras was a child, he spent lots of time pondering his universe and asking lots of questions. I hope that when he became the teacher, the knowledge and wealth of information students acquired under his tutelage was the measure of his greatness.
It is not a politically correct time in which to espouse an ideology that isn”t democratic. I am not wealthy, as the students of Pythagoras were, or bourgeoisie even, but the question I have been contemplating lately, while staring at the clouds, is this … had Pythagoras been required by a corporate city state of Athens to teach everyone and anyone would the quality of education been any better or worse? Would his students have valued their education any more or less? Would there have been free couscous and tabouli each day for lunch? And, how would the course of history have differed in any case?
Tammy McDonnell is a substitute pre-school teacher who lives in Kelseyville and is known as “Miss Tammy” by scores of children around the lake.
