There’s a huge shortage of qualified math and science teachers.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. These days, it’s a lot more lucrative to do just about anything than to teach. Our high-schools have terrible problems with discipline. They have shortages of everything but trouble. And with families getting smaller and there being more childless families, no one wants to pay to fix the problems.
How do you fix it? The answer to that, if I had it, would probably fill several book shelves. But there is a good idea that’s been passed around more than once: pay off the student loans of graduates who teach for three or four years. It’s been done before, too.
This idea is being proposed by Senator Max Barcus (D-Montana). He is proposing it just for science, math, and engineering, but I think it could be used to help improve the education we give our children in all areas.
When I was in high school, in Kentucky. One of my best teachers was teaching trigonometry at my high school, in Louisville Kentucky. Kentucky had a program that paid off student loans for people who taught in high school for three years. He was an excellent teacher, one that my school probably would never have had, if not for that program. In the three years he was at that school, he helped hundreds of students.
A program like this gives us the chance to borrow smart driven individuals for a few years, before they start their careers. Hopefully, it will convince a few of them to stay on and teach for a living, but even if none of them do, the effects of their work will be felt throughout the community.
