Finding your forte

This charming video was first published for Glue Magazine in conjunction with Chelsea Brunette's article found here:
http://glueottawa.com/2013/01/the-auditor-finding-your-forte/

Stand up and get involved

Aaron L. Pope

We cannot sit idly by and hope for something good to happen; it’s time to get involved.

Ontario students are facing some of the worst circumstances in the history of this nation. Sky-rocketing debt, unemployment rates in the double digits, especially for the younger workforce, and on top of everything else, tuition rates that have increased 110 per cent since 2000.

The fact of the matter is students, parents, teachers and anyone who gives a damn about the future of Canada should be learning the lessons the students’ in Quebec taught their government.

The lesson they taught is a simple one: If you don’t do something about this insanity, we will be forced to take drastic measures to get a fair deal.

As a child, I was told that if I worked hard and applied myself to things that I hate, I can get the job of my choosing. I was told that if I took part in the over 15,000 hours of mandatory schooling and kept my opinions to myself, I could expect a college degree, the key to a happy and prosperous life.

What a load of bull.

And now I’m told that rising tuition is a necessity, because costs keep rising and government subsidies keep subsiding. I’m told that letting every single Canadian child get a good and fair education is simply not sustainable. I’m told that some must be left behind so the rest can prosper. Not everyone can get to go to college.

Oh but there is so much money available for students to go to school. There’s OSAP, and TD bank seems to have fair interest rates; someone will “give” students the cash to get through it. Never once mentioning the fact that most students who graduate will face a debt load of upwards $20,000, and that’s if they are lucky.

Most loans involve promises. I promise to pay back the cost of my car to the bank or mobster, whichever will accept my credit rating. I promise to pay back the cost of my house – hopefully before I die. In return, I am given a car and a house. Both things are guaranteed for as long as I can make my payments or complete them.

A college diploma on the other hand, is a wishy washy half-truth. You will pay back what you owe, but there is never a guarantee made that your diploma will be worth the paper it’s printed on the moment it hits your hot little hands.

The best the post-secondary establishment can do is offer statistics. They can say for certain that the majority of college graduates will earn roughly 25 per cent more money over the course of their lives than their under-educated counter parts. They can say the job market demands you have a college degree and trying to go without a post-secondary diploma will put you behind all the other hundreds of thousands of people who worked and toiled for years paying for the privilege to do so.

I believe that if we can open our wallets in order to spend billions of dollars on a war we had nothing to do with, millions on war planes we will never use, if we can spend billions of dollars subsidizing corporations to keep Canadians dependent on corn and oil, then we can pull a little change out of the couch to put our kids through school.

That’s why we must protest; we must write letters and demand change. The piecemeal discounts and tuition refunds politicians offer students when it’s politically advantageous is nothing compared to the cost Canadians will have to bare when the wells dry up and our children are too stupid to do anything about it.

We must make education, real education as accessible as fast food chains. We must make them a beacon of hope, and then maybe we will see real change and everyone can have the life they choose over toil and death.

Finding work after graduation

Algonquin College Graduate Employment Report

12/12/2012

Aaron L. Pope

When someone tells you that they're pregnant with God's baby you may want to change the subject. At least that's what Miranda Lavallee, Algonquin graduate and current employee at a local women's shelter did her first few weeks on the job.
Lavallee graduated from the community and justice services program at Algonquin College three years ago and she has since been applying her education to working at a local woman’s homeless shelter. The skills that she picked up at Algonquin College have served her well in dealing with the many interesting situations that come from working in a place like this.
"I came in and I had to deal with this woman who was mentally ill and said that she was pregnant with God's child," said Lavallee. "The staff thought it would be funny, but also good work experience to get me in there and more or less direct her to move her belongings to the basement. So it was a huge, huge learning curve for me. It was kind of funny, but not really because of the mental health issues."
Lavallee managed to get a job out of the placement that Algonquin College set up for her in the last year of her course. Thanks to her in-class work and her field placement she was more than prepared to take on the challenges of working at a homeless shelter.
Every year thousands of students graduate from Algonquin College flooding the workforce with fresh skills and fresh eyes, the kind of attributes employers are looking for.
In order to keep up with industry demand and to know how the alumni are doing, the employment center at Algonquin College keeps records of graduates in the form of the Graduate Employment Report. The report which is done once a year every year compiles a full and detailed list of courses, graduates and whether or not they have found a job in their field of study, are still looking for employment or have moved on to another level of education.
"I often get phone calls from employers," said Jennifer Jarvis, employment outreach officer from student support services. “Usually, they are small businesses and they want to hire a graduate and they are not really sure what they should be paying. They may not have experience with new hires, they may have a small number of employees that have been with them for a while and they may not know how to go about getting labor market information."
Jarvis helps both the students trying to find work and employers trying to find workers. Mainly she will point potential employers and potential new students to the graduation employment report to get a handle on what each individual course offers.
"Sometimes students or parents will look at programs and I'm not going to say they make their decision on whether or not to choose a program based on those statistics," said Jarvis. "But they will look at the number of students that graduate from a program and the number of students who go on to full-time employment or to further education (to make their decision)”
However, not all courses are created equal. The courses that have seen the most graduates get jobs after school also have the highest numbers of graduates and the highest intake rates.
One of the courses which has consistently churned out a high number of employed graduates is the computer systems technician course. The course is a two-year program which teaches students about networking, operating systems and providing support for those technologies.
In the past week alone, Sean McBride, program coordinator for the computer systems technician course has already received three phone calls from employers looking to hire one of his grads.
"It's kind of unique in the sense that there's not a particular employer or group of employers that are being targeted," said McBride. “Anyone that uses IT, which is effectively anybody to supply and demand is an appropriate place for the students, which is nice to see."
This course, like many others strives for the most up-to-date curriculum in order to train the next generation of workers in every industry the college has a course to service.

"We are able to continually modify our own delivery approach," said William Garbarino, coordinator of the business marketing course at Algonquin College. "I make tweaks every single year, most programs have maybe a three to five year cycle, then they make some changes where we upgrade every single year. We cannot afford to stay put, within a couple of years the industry moves so dramatically that we have to try to stay out on the leading edge with it."
Program coordinators, administrators and professors at Algonquin College have been keeping their ears to the ground and making sure that they understand exactly what it is that employers are looking for from their graduates.
"The biggest thing with employers now is they are under pressure to get people up and performing quickly," said Garbarino. “They don't have the time to take you through a very long and protracted training period to get the basic skills and fundamentals. They expect those skills to be there."
Kyber Outerwear is a clothing manufacturing and distribution company that distributes its product to a few thousand retail outlets across the country. They are looking to expand and they have already posted an ad looking for graduates on the job posting board at Algonquin’s website.
"We are looking for someone that has fresh skills and will work at a cost-effective rate," said Todd Lavigne, human relations officer at Kyber. "We don't care what they got in terms of their grades at school and we don't see where they graduated in their class. We just want to know if they finish the program that's really what we look for; we are the same as everyone else."
Developing job searching skills can be one of the most difficult and grueling parts of one's education. Just because an Algonquin student has graduated, it doesn't mean that they still can't benefit from the school's services.
"We can do interview coaching, one on one mock interviews," said Jarvis. "We will develop some questions, ask those questions and then give the student a little bit of feedback. All of this is based on our experience working with employers. We often sit down with employers and (ask) them ‘what are you looking for? Tell us what you like to see on a resume, tell us a little bit about your interview format.’ Sometimes students don't have that experience with a formal structured interview."
Rodney Walsh is the program coordinator for the developmental service worker course. He trains his students to work with the developmentally challenged in group home settings or for families of the developmentally disabled.
He says most of his students will get a job where they've done their last placement. The job sites like to hire his students because they don't have to train them and it saves money in the long run. Developmental service workers have an average starting salary of $46,000 per year according to Walsh.
"I think we have such success because, first of all the type of program that it is," said Walsh. “We are very specialized program different than ECE, different then police foundations, because we have a very special type of training that is needed in the community and they can't hire an ECE and they can't hire another type of degree because they don't get the specialized training they get with us."
There are some common themes that everyone seems to agree are very important when it comes to the job hunt. While not every employer is going to be looking for the same qualifications, they are going to be looking for a lot of the same attributes in a new potential hire.
One of the main things is to put yourself out there, to volunteer anywhere that you might be hoping to work in the future.
"At the beginning I came in and did every down and dirty shift possible," said Lavallee. "I remember one time we had an incident with bedbugs and a few of the residents had a lot of bed linens that needed to be washed and we didn't have enough laundry machines here. So I just took a shift and volunteered to carry stuff to another building and wash it. A little effort goes a long way I guess."
Lavallee's advice is to put yourself out there and work harder than you think you need to and be open to anything even if you don't think that it's within your field of study, it's a small part of a bigger picture.
The next thing that is important when looking for a job is to get used to the idea of networking yourself.
"The issue is most professional jobs are not out there sitting in some job posting board," said Garbarino. "They are available through people's networks, they're available through referrals and unless you tap into that, you're going to have a lot of problems. Most of our grads are experts at (networking) and that's why our employment rate is so high."
Garbarino says the biggest thing is to figure out what kind of job you want or which industry you want to become a part of and research it.
"Too many students just go out there and start throwing resumes up on monster and start applying to everything without figuring out exactly what they want," said Garbarino. "Talk to people that have an affiliation with the industry, what are they looking for? What are the skills they desire? What is their hiring cycle? All of those things will help you have a better understanding as to where the jobs are."
Even just staying in touch with classmates and professors can lead to future employment. Classmates who have found jobs will have the inside track on their company new hires.
"Step up your networking," said Jarvis. "I don't think that new graduates really know how important it is. If they're not getting a job in their field, if they have a job that's paying the bills, they need to look at: can they possibly find something that they can do that will create connections in their field?"
According to Jarvis sometimes it's just a matter of casting your net a little bit wider, looking for jobs outside of your field or looking for jobs outside of your geographical area. If you are looking for work you may need to move to another city or even province which is looking for people to come in from the outside.
So be aggressive in researching your field, talk to anyone and everyone who can move you one step closer to finding the job you have worked so hard for already. Research your industry and personalize your approach to any company you are courting for a job or a placement.
Don’t shy away from grunt work. You may have been top of your class in high school and college, but in the working world you are at the bottom rung. The good news is there is nowhere to go from the bottom but up.

-30-

Remembrance Day 2012 Photo Essay

Aaron L. Pope

Moving through the crowd, one thing was certain, I should have gotten a press pass. No way could I have gotten close enough to the front to actually manage a shot or two of the cenotaph. But it was okay, because the real action was out in the crowd with the people who took the time out of their day, and their weekend to pause and pay their respect to the men and women who fought, and continue to fight for Canada.
Although it was a relatively warm day, and the warmest remembrance day I can remember, the mood of the crowd was solemn and respectful.

Changing gears

Aaron L. Pope

First published in Glue Magazine.

It was just one phone call, and I had been reduced to tears.

Seven years, two domestic aid-to-civil-power deployments and just over nine months in the deserts of Afghanistan – my military career was finished. I had lost my identity.

I had fulfilled my duty to my country, and I was free now to live a life I had never imagined. Like many other career soldiers, I believed I was a lifer. I was going to do 20 or 30 years in the military and retire on a nice pension somewhere the Canadian dollar was valued higher.

But then the phone call from the Canadian forces release section came through. It wasn’t much of a surprise; I was exhausted and suffering from a traumatic war-time tour. One serving of war was plenty for me; it was time to leave the military once and for all.

The moment I hung up the phone all the events from the past years hit me at once, and truth be told; I never felt so alone in my life.

Alone and without any civilian qualifications, like so many others who have been forced to upgrade their skills, I was going to have to go back to school if I was going to have any optimism about the future. Staring down the barrel of two years of education was bad enough; I had no idea what I was even going to study.

At Algonquin College, Jacqueline Miller, manager of workforce community outreach works with people who are trying to improve or to discover their skill sets. Whether you are fresh out of high school, coming back from years in the workforce, or an Alumnus who wishes to improve your resume, some time with Miller will help you get your career and education objectives on track.

“Education is something you will always have,” said Miller. “Many things will change in your life, but the education you obtain through post-secondary is really important.”

Thankfully I had some helpful staff members’ at veterans affairs who helped me realize the strengths I worked on for years in the military will suit any career I choose as long as I’m willing to do the work. The same can be said for anyone, but not everyone is going to get the benefit of a social worker for unemployed veterans. There are other people who are there to help the hopelessly career deficient masses.  

Alan Kearns of Career Joy, an Ottawa based professional development company, says that there are many challenges that come with career change. One’s Identity can feel lost even if someone makes the conscious decision to change direction. Then there is the economic reality, some people are going to need to supplement their incomes at jobs they may not want to do while they are retraining for a new career path.

Whether you’re going through a career revolution, or a career evolution, it is going to be difficult. The biggest challenges people face are often the challenges they put in front of themselves, says Kearns.

According to Statistics Canada, the average age of people in college is 24, and Canadians will change jobs over seven times during the course of their lives. Change is something everyone must endure in order to survive in the world.

It was the thought of returning to a classroom of college kids that really kept me up at night in the months leading up to the first day of classes. I was worried I would be the oldest guy in the room, the other students wouldn't take me seriously, or worse, I would be wasting even more time on a fruitless endeavour.

Nothing could have been further from reality. This is the time in my life when I wasn't expecting to make any new friends, or even have the energy to invest in fostering relationships outside of my usual circle. Life doesn't always turn out how you think it will. I find myself surrounded by a new group of amazing friends and colleagues who have challenged and inspired me to take on my new life.

A common question I’m asked about my military service is; do I miss it? Short answer, of course I do. To me it was a source of pride and identity. I had a mission I could believe in, and the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than anything I could imagine.

Whether it was fighting fires in the forests of British Columbia, or fighting terrorists in the deserts of Afghanistan, the mission was always the same. Protect your family, protect your friends and protect your home. All I ever wanted to do was protect the people I loved from the harshness of the world. And in the process, I had found out that the people I loved also wanted to look after me.

 The army was my family and anywhere I went in the world, I was home in the company of my brothers.  It was a singular experience, and it’s over.

Change is inevitable; it’s foolish to imagine life standing still on a planet moving through space at a speed of 1,800 kilometres per minute. I know I will never stop learning, and I will never stop changing.

A change in careers doesn't mean I have lost my family, friends and everything I care about. It means that I can start to live a new life; I can spend time with my family who've been to hell and back waiting for the phone to ring, or a knock on the door to tell them I'm okay, that I've made it.

My new career is life. And my family couldn't be happier to have me home.  

For myself, and the thousands of other adults who find themselves forced to change careers, there is hope. I have found a new calling here at Algonquin and I no longer feel alone. In fact I have never felt less alone now that I have a second chance at a new beginning. 

2012

04/01/2012

Aaron L. Pope

So long 2011! I bid you farewell, but please don’t call.

This year has been an eye opening experience for me, to say the least. The world is going through some interesting times, very interesting times. Arab spring, occupy Wall Street, and a whole slew of interesting decisions by the power elite.

Perpetual motion is supposedly an impossibility, but to the casual observer it would seem as if the needs and wants of the people have completely diverged from the needs and wants of the people in power and the speed at which the two are moving away from one another is just getting faster and faster by the day. Bankers, politicians and power brokers continually work to strip away every dollar and every last bit of freedom they can from the average citizen while at the same time the people are coming together all over the world to muster up the courage to tell these power elites- No!

No, we don’t want or like any of the rules you have been putting down. No, we don’t want big business bailed out. No, we don’t want to be put in a cage for voicing our opinions, just because you may not like what we have to say.

The fact of the matter is, never in my life has the constant smell of revolution been so prominent in everyday living. I mean never.

But, like so many things in life, if I let myself get so wrapped up in the big picture, the riots, the police brutality, net neutrality, I can feel myself getting worked up into a frenzy – into a state of anger that must be sated with the blood of the evil men and women bent on destroying everything you and I hold so dear. In the end, I cannot do anything about it, and it is the smaller stuff that ends up suffering.

So what now?

In 2012 I must take heed of the important personal matters in my life. A cop killed a kid in Oakland; I can’t do a dam thing about it. But I can make sure I get an A+ on my final exam so I can become a respected journalist and one day be in a position to point the cameras at the injustices of the world. A suicide bomber takes out 20 people in a market in Palestine. Well...I guess I can make sure I call my mother more often. A child molester is released from prison after serving two years of a seven years sentence. I can be more observant of my neighbourhood and maybe even get to know one or two of my neighbours at the same time.

Big change is hard; sure, the problems of the world can seem insurmountable. Hell, even small change is difficult, but a while ago some environmentalists decided that rather than sitting around hoping the world would wake up to their cause, they would be mindful of the environmental impact of their own lives instead.

I’m not saying you should recycle, or plant a tree, even though both of those things are a good idea. What I am saying is that the people around us matter. Smile as though you mean it when you see someone on the bus. Tip your waitress well, if for no other reason than she has been working her butt off all day to make sure her customers are happy, and all for less than the minimum wage.

Be mindful of your neighbours, and be generous with your smiles. Be nice to people, all people. Because when you need them, they might just be there for you in the end. This worlds only chance of survival is love, because without love, what the hell are we all doing here.

Education= The Cost of doing Business

Where we came from and where we are going with our educational institutions

By Aaron L. Pope

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain." This quote by John Adams about what life and liberty were supposed to mean for future generations was, in this writers opinion, an inspiring and hopeful message meant to steer people in the direction of peace and prosperity. 

But instead we have turned a vision for the future into a nightmare of unending war and poverty. John Adams was an intelligent man and from this quote it is obvious that he believed that one day we would put aside our primal instincts of aggression towards our neighbours and focus on the positive aspects of being human.

Education is the cornerstone of our civilization, it is the beginning and the end and everything in between; without it there is no medicine, there are no economies, no protection from nature. Education is what separates us from the rest of the animals on this planet, and it is what protects us from each other. 

History shows us that it is the more advanced societies that cull the less developed, how embarrassing would it have been for the first European settlers to find a civilization of highly evolved people living in North America with cars and planes and all sorts of advanced scientific knowledge? My guess is that those settlers would not have lasted long. When education becomes a coveted prize that only a few lucky individuals have access to, life as we know it will come to a halt. 

Past civilizations have actively kept knowledge from their people, and look where it got them. Case after case of once great nations crumbling into oblivion, for want of the knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic. If we haven't learned from the failures of past societies, if we hoard knowledge the way billionaires hoard money and privilege, then just as past nations have fallen from grace, so too shall we all.

We are living in an age of information. Lucky for us some of that information pertains to past methods of conveying education onto the young. We get to look back and say with complete confidence that some methods work wonderfully, and other methods are barbaric and should not ever be copied or giving credence. 

It is logical to assume that the earliest human societies survived or perished on how well they educated their young. After the first child wandered out of the cave only to be eaten by a bear, the adults probably figured out that they should teach their children how to survive in the world. 

There are theories about the earliest Egyptians being an incredibly advanced culture that rivals our own present day culture. The theory suggests that there was a school where people from all over the world would come to learn the secrets of the universe, but because that knowledge was so prized, only a few people were ever allowed access to it, and when the last holders of this knowledge died out there was no way of carrying on the legacy of knowledge. 

This is a bit far out, but what if the guarding of knowledge was the eventual downfall of a great civilization? The last hundred years or so of western society have seen an increase in education on an unprecedented scale. Not to say that everything that was done in this time was correct, but the results speak for themselves. Access to education is widely available compared to the centuries past, and the breadth of knowledge has been increasing at an astronomical rate.

The introduction of computers, and the internet has meant that when new discoveries are made, when new math theorems are proved, and when new books are published, everyone on the planet with internet access can find out about it and incorporate it into their lesson plans. 

Of course that means that schools will have to be able to keep up with the changing world. Along with the dramatic increases in knowledge and in technology, the cost of education seems to be speeding up as well. Just because education is widely available, does not mean that everyone gets to go to a post secondary school. 

Sometimes it is about the smarts, but most of the time it is about the money, and the current thinking is that either you have it, or you don't. Of course the stress of having to make enough money to go to school is a leading cause of drop outs in college, and in today's economy even the educated are forced to take low paying jobs. 

Tuition in post secondary is in a dangerous up trend, if you compare the trend lines of college tuition, the New York stock exchange, and the Canadian gross domestic product you would see that even as prices all over the world are rising and dropping, the only steady increase is in tuition. You don't have to be an economist to figure out that dramatic rise in price can create a bubble, and if these figures keep going up you won't be able to afford to become an economist. 

I have to believe that this trend will eventually even out, because preparing our young for the future is the most important element of survival, even the cavemen knew that.

The headlines of today's newspapers are saturated with stories coming out of the middle east and Africa about governments being overthrown by people who are fed up with their protectionist policies and the governments constant censorship and monitoring of the internet and media in general. 

That doesn't sum up all the reasons for these uprisings, but it does highlight the fact that when people today feel like they are being taken advantage of and lied to, they will demand change. Not a five year plan for change, not a ten year plan, they want change and they want it now. 

The Canadian government should be looking at these events and wondering to themselves what it will take for uprisings like that to start happening here. Parents of university students and students themselves are feeling the pinch of an economy in recession and are having a hard enough time keeping food on the table and the lights on let alone trying to pay tuition. 

It can be frustrating watching the government throwing good money after bad at a failed financial sector while at the same time withholding funding from colleges and universities.

As long as we can manage to keep our children in school, there are some wonderful benefits to the education sector to look forward to. 

Advances in technology are adding many benefits to the classroom. Imagine a class on forensic anthropology where the professor is in the field on a dig and is connected to a classroom live via the internet. She could explain what she is doing while answering questions from students right there. How about a paperless classroom where every student has a computer and can download the newest textbooks available. The limits of the imagination are the only real limits when it comes to technology in the classroom. This means that parents, teachers, and adult learners might be behind the curve and need to do some serious studying in order to keep up with their kids.

Deciding to go to a post secondary school is going to mean that life is going to change in a few ways for me. For starters, as an adult learner I know that I will be behind my classmates in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to social media and how that stuff works. Facebooking, twitering, I.M-ing, are all things that come very naturally to the younger generation, and knowing that schools are incorporating that stuff into the curriculum is going to be difficult to deal with. 

I am very lucky in that money is not going to be an issue for me, however, anyone going to school is going to suffer financially, they are going to suffer for a long time. Not just during school, but after as well when they have to start dodging their student loans. 

For so many students in the secondary school system, high school will be the last time they enter a classroom setting. For those that continue on to post secondary, high schools are well prepared to help out with college preparation. Advanced classes in math, science, and English exist for the academically minded and no doubt do a lot to prepare some students for their academic future. 

For those that reach the end of the road at graduation, or slightly before, will find that almost none of what they learned in their years of careful matriculation will be of any use what so ever in the working world.

Unfortunately for our over worked and underpaid teachers, there is not a whole lot that they can do on their own. It is a bit perplexing that one institution is supposed to fit all types, and are supposed to prepare people for all eventualities. This is simply unrealistic. Schools should be much better funded, with more staff and a lot more flexibility on the courses they offer. Focusing on academic courses for the few that can use them is leaving out a huge percentage of students that could do more with programs in the arts and in athletics than they can today. Widening the curriculum and funding would do wonders with students who are never going to be doctors or lawyers, and because high schools are for all types of people, not just certain types, but all people, there should be a curriculum for everyone.

Post secondary schools are the dividing line between the future leaders of tomorrow, and those that will be cleaning their houses. College students learn that in order to succeed in the world, they need to be better, stronger, and smarter than all those around them. 

They should be cut throat, and they should sacrifice basic human dignity for the brass ring of success, this is just wrong. 

Colleges should be the place in the world where any and all can come to learn, to expand their thinking and learn how to contribute to society, not just take from it. Am I mistaken? I don't think so. While classroom work is setting them up for success, they are learning something completely different from the "grown up" world around them. 

They are forced to take giant loans, pay all sorts of fee's that come out of nowhere, and work low paying jobs mortgaging off precious studying hours in order to pay these vampires. This is sending out a message, a message that has a detrimental effect on these students futures. Students for the last 50 years have been getting the message loud and clear, get yours at any cost. The ones who grew up in this system have caused massive financial ruin all over the world in their efforts to die with the most toys.

This philosophy of suffering to succeed is insane, it is rampant group think that has sunk our society into this depraved greedy state of being. Colleges should be one hundred percent subsidized by the country, not only that, but students should be rewarded for advancing in academics, not penalized. 

Money is flowing in the wrong direction, and that this is not of huge concern for all citizens is insanity. The smarter our children are, the smarter their children will be, and that is the way we ensure our continued existence on this planet. Why don't we want to leave this planet and it's precious minds in the best situation when we draw our last breath?

The greatest protection that we can leave future generations is education. Stab the monster, stoke the fire, and improve on your forefathers work is what is important to ensure our continued existence in the universe. Teachers should be paid as well as hockey players, and should be the gold standard of education, as impartial as judges when deciding on a curriculum and as supportive of their students as a new mother to her baby. The future of education should be the main concern of every parent, politician, and human being that enjoys a sunny day. For this and many other reasons education is of utmost importance.