In a powerful and emotional address, Joycelyn
Elders, the former U.S. Surgeon General,
repeatedly challenged attendees at ASCD's
57th Annual Conference to answer one
question: Why does America spend more to help
its prisoners than to help its children?
“Since 1980, we've paid the average prison
guard with less than a high school education
$57,000 a year,” she said angrily. “It costs
taxpayers $35,000 per prisoner to keep someone in
jail, and we're paying both more than we pay a
teacher with a master's degree. That is wrong!”
The effects of these misdirected priorities,
Elders argued, are visible in the sufferings of
America's children. “Many of our young people
graduate with shoes that glow when they walk
but with a brain that goes dead when they talk,”
she said. “It's up to us to make sure that they
[graduate] with four things: an ability to hear
those less fortunate, a vision that allows them
to see things farther than their eyes can reach,
a scroll that shows a good
education, and a song to inspire [them]
when things get rough.”
Teachers, she continued, can make a
powerful difference in society's efforts to
combat poverty and hopelessness. “A
good health education teacher is worth
two doctors. If that teacher can prevent
one boy from doing drugs or one girl
from suffering an unplanned pregnancy,
she has saved her community more than
she gets back.”
That saving, Elders stressed, often
faces opposition. “People say, ‘Oh, we
can't afford this!’ But have you ever gone
to a community that needed a new
prison that didn't find the money? Don't
we pay for these things when we see
people on welfare who did not get a
good education? We know what we've
got to do; it's a matter of getting it
done.”
Getting it done, however, can be
perilous, as Elders acknowledged
humorously. “When you talk about
change, people say the time is not right,
the money is not right—and if you keep
it up long enough, they say, ‘Dr. Elders,
you are not right!’”
Nonetheless, she argued, education
and health care must be improved
because the price of failure is too high.
“LOur young people—our most
valuable resource—have their lives at
stake,” Elders said. “We must care for
them, because as the old saying goes,
not to know is bad, not wanting to
know is worse, not to hope is
unthinkable—but not to care is
simply unforgivable.”