So this morning I heard a man speak from Uganda, Africa. My first thought was, “Great a guy asking for money.” Wow I was so wrong. The guy started telling what he does and how it all began.  He runs an orphanage and he was telling how it all started with him buying lunch for four children and eventually buying chicken houses for them and 50 of their friends to live in.  He went on to say that his first goal was to find teachers for the children.  Then he said something that I absolutely loved. He summed up the reason why education is so important in one statement:

“If we do not educate children, we are just warehousing them.  We are setting them up to be the prostitutes and pimps of the future.”

WOW isn’t that an incredible statement? Now I know for him in Uganda he is not speaking metaphorically, children in that country will really become prostitutes or pimps if not educated.  But think about our children/students who “slip through the cracks” or drop out or how ever remain uneducated.  Those students become adults who just do things for money.  Hold “jobs” so they can have money to survive.  No careers, no dreams come true, no more goals.  They become “prostitiutes and pimps” of society, the ones doing the bare minimum for their “checks” or even doing nothing at all and collecting from the government.

How as educators could you not want to stop this pattern?! No we cannot change everyone, but we can try to help more than one. We cannot take them out of the environment they live in or the past they have lived, but we can show them they can be successful in something.  We share with them our knowledge and our love for learning.  We teach them how in this new technological age how to “find the answers,” be in control of their learning, and to always want to know more.  We teach them to question, not just answer.  We need to teach them never to be satisfied with the answer.  There is more to educating students than making sure they can pass a stupid test.  Learning needs to be lifelong, education is THAT important.  If you don’t they just become protitutes and pimps of society. NO CHILD DESERVES THAT FATE.

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