Gladly Would I Teach

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A sample math question from Georgia’s Power Standards:

A company that produces pens has n pens in stock at the beginning of a certain day. It produces these pens at a constant rate r for the entire day. If that day, pens have been produced at a greater constant rate, write an equation that can be used to determine the number of pens the company has in stock at the end of that day. (Georgia Department of Education. Information for GPS Math Implementation. May-June, 2007)

I have a better question for the Georgia Department of Education:

In 2009 Georgia suffered a terrible recession/depression and many teachers lost their jobs, endured salary reductions, and experienced furlough days. If in the fall of that same year of pay cuts, the Georgia Department of Education (GDOE) prints pens inscribed “Georgia Standards.org” and distributes them to thousands of teachers across the state, write an equation that can be used to track the lack of intelligence, social awareness, empathy, thoughtfulness, and fiscal responsibility that accompany such an act.

I know it is just a simple little pen, but did all Georgia teachers receive a pen? If so, with over 90,000 teachers in Georgia (NCES: Digest of Education Statistics), those little pens cost big bucks, big bucks that perhaps could have been used to

• save teacher jobs,

• prevent salary cuts,

• reduce furlough days.

We know about the pens because they were distributed to teachers. How much more money has the GDOE frittered away on inane objects without our knowledge? At a time when private citizens are curtailing their expenses, shouldn’t frugality reign in government? Does it make any sense to squander tax money on such trivial items?

Surely the GDOE doesn’t really think it needs to provide a special pen to teachers, many of whom spend their final classroom moments each day picking up discarded pens and pencils from classroom floors and adding them to the stash of writing utensils inside their desk drawers. If the GDOE needed pens, Georgia teachers could have given them some from our stashes.

Please tell me that a company donated the pens to Georgia teachers.

Why didn’t the GDOE at least add another line to the inscription:

Enjoy your furlough days!