I'm so proud of myself. I completed an 8 page bureaucratic piece of bully caca application for a job, a teaching job. It makes my skin crawl to do such things. Applications like this are generally so redundant. Send along your resume with the paper on which you were just required to list every single job you have held since you first rode your bike down to the plastic plant where your dad was working and said, "I just got a job." (Selling vegetables at a farm stand.) I am pleased to report that while this application took me an hour or so to complete, it wasn't as mercilessly repetitive (read: wasting of my time as well as that of the people who have to read it, and how do I get a job making that kind of stuff go away?) as some, and was in fact pretty streamlined and straightforward.
Now, the real problem: This application is for a teaching position. A certified teaching position. This requires certification. I don't have that any more. I let my teaching certificates expire years ago, except for the Substitute Teacher certificate I got here in Wyoming just-in-case. That one lapsed in December. The problem with all this is that not only does it cost $200 these days to get a piece of paper letting people know I am still capable and qualified to teach, after having done so for several years, but this particular application is properly bureaucratic: not streamlined at all and not especially clear in its description of the specific hoops that people of certain stripes must jump through in order to be deemed OK with the system.
My skin is crawling now, and I feel like I want to punch someone in the head with my jacknife. I just don't know who. (Cloud Lurker today, a fine upstanding veteran substitute teacher in the Casper, WY, schools, warned me , "You do know an anarchist doesn't do very well in the closest thing to communism the 'west' has ever devised.. that being a public school system...")
Now that I have a calming bowl of Cinnamon Crunch in front of me, let me deliberate on why it burns me, this system. And you can commiserate... or not.
Is there not a shortage of teachers in many places these days? Specifically a shortage of Special Education, Math and Science teachers, but in some places, very urban and very rural, shortages of teachers in general? So, why would it cost several arms and legs for someone who is qualified and ready to go into the field, to get a certificate? (I will not even go further than mentioning what I believe to be the heinous practice of requiring paying for fingerprints.) Are teachers not paid quite a bit less than other working people, to educate the nation's future civic and workforce participants and leaders? Quite a bit less than people who don't have to pay to be told they are OK to do their jobs? (Go ahead, parents, throw it at me. But see, I don't have a problem with proving I'm worthy to spend time with your kids; I just don't think I should have to pay a lot of money to prove it. Or if I do, then I should be guaranteed a job, and a well-paying one, before I fork over the cash.)
---And really, anyway, maybe we should make the kids start being fingerprinted and paying for certification as students so we can be assured-- mm-hmm-- that they won't be shooting other kids with guns then killing themselves, or plotting to murder their third-grade teachers.
This only leads to another discussion, of our thriving letigious society, or whose responsible for whose behavior, both of which I am not prepared to go on about right now. I'm on my second bowl of cereal and not feeling better. I've spewd about all this enough today that I finally feel like I'm done.
Where are our priorities?
I'm going to make a hotel reservation for Denver and read and forget about it for now.
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3 comments:
I chose to remove my first comment because I said some things that might not be seen as "professional". However, let it be known that I commiserate with you on this--once again, it's the people who make the least money who have to suck it up and pay out the nose...
I got your other comment. It came to me via e-mail, even though you'd deleted it here. Scathing, perhaps, but indicative of the bizarreness of our culture. There is a fine line sometimes between expressing oneself politically or philosophically and maintaining professionality, and keeping ones mouth shut in order to retain ones place in the workforce. Especially the more money we pay and the higher education we garner in order to be in the job world. Frankly, this makes me not just slightly nauseous, but if I didn't have low blood pressure as a rule, my health might be in serious danger.
A good friend of mine was here for dinner recently. She works for The State. She works in the Legislative Branch of The State. She and her colleagues were "encouraged" not to attend Democratic rallies when Bill and Hillary and Barack came around. This is not a different topic. Hermana, you will make the connection, as you will recall your deleted comment. It may seem a little convoluted, but it's still an important point to keep in mind in this Land of the Free.
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