"The American Dream Is For Suckers"
So I listened to my parents, to my teachers, and to my elders and I studied hard. What was the point?
With new employment numbers due Friday, March 4th, we at FrumForum decided that it was time to listen to the voices of the young as they face the challenges of this economic crisis. Over the next days, in an exclusive series, we will be featuring a number of their first-person stories. If their experience is yours, we welcome you to join the conversation at Editor@FrumForum.com.
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So I listened to my parents, to my teachers, and to my elders and I studied hard. Eventually I went to Michigan State University. When I got there, teachers asked me, “What do you want to do for the rest of your life? What do you love?” I told them I loved history, but I also realized the only way I could make money in history was to teach. So I began to enter classrooms and work with children. I came to realize how much I loved it-- how much I loved helping students, not just with social studies, but with reading and writing. I came to realize that what I could do, what I could bring, what I could contribute to my country was teaching. So I kept studying.
It was then that I began to see cracks. I began to wonder where the rewards of college were. What was the point? Why did I feel so alone, while doing what I was told was right? They told me college was fun, but no one I met who had fun at college was succeeding at college, at least not with the grades and achievements that led them to jobs. It tore at me, but I bottled it inside. I told myself to work harder, that the ends would justify my hard work today. I graduated with a 3.57 and a Bachelor’s in History. Then I went for my teaching certificate--and began working at an urban school in Lansing, MI.
I saw more cracks. Racial Gaps. Drug Use. Apathy. I worked hard to help students realize simple ideas, the ideas I had been brought up with. I wondered why they ignored me. Why when I told them to work hard, to study, to go to college, did they simply smile and nod? Why had they given up already? What had crushed them? I was told it was because of all kinds of things: parenting, community failure, systemic racism, music, culture. Yet it was not the causes that worried me--nor the solutions, for they were many, they were identifiable. What scared me most of all was the apathy of our government leaders, the lack of willingness to take a stand, to do something. I began to listen to debates over solutions, over money, over politics, but again and again what scared me was that no one just picked one, no one decided, no one acted… They just talked in order to stall.
I completed my teaching certificate with many of these questions unsolved and haunting my thoughts. I entered the job market in the spring of 2010. I'd done my work. I was enthusiastic to help my students. Yet even with minor state government incentives to open my job market, there was nothing. There were less than 70 jobs in my field in the entire state with job postings regularly receiving 500 or more applicants. I considered myself lucky that I, a graduate of the "US News and World Report #1 College of Education" in the nation, had gotten 3 interviews, while friends from less distinguished schools went through the summer with none. I found myself accepting the rejections, nodding in understanding as administrators told me I was the only one they interviewed with less than five years teaching experience. That they were sure I would be a great teacher someday.
I set out again, moving back home with my parents, working in my local school district as a substitute, getting the experience that the employers told me I needed. I saved by living at home; by last December I was making $350 a week and my student loans were coming due. I started the $550 monthly payment that will follow me for the next decade. I told myself that $45,000 wasn’t that bad. Yet I began to wonder about my fellow unemployed teaching graduates who didn’t have even have substituting work to fall into, whose family hadn’t paid for the other half of their education like mine had, and who were paying rent. I began to wonder how these friends could survive making loan payments at the cost of $1,000 a month, and taking housing and minimum wage jobs outside of their degree fields. I began to look closely at my own students and tried to imagine what jobs they would have when they graduated. What exactly was I preparing them for?
Now here I sit… substitute teaching for minimum wage, paying a loan payment that cripples me, living with my parents, watching government cut education spending for the students who need me, and wondering if my one extra year of experience is enough for the 70 jobs that may--or may not--be available this summer. It has me wondering about all the things I’ve ever been taught. It has me thinking that I am a sucker. It has me thinking that there is something very wrong with America.
You can contact Gregg Neville at: gregg.neville@gmail.com.
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