Higher standards needed for teachers
The future of the world is in the hands of the youth. There are a few opportunities for local high school students to learn about career paths, which is great! There are also many students or former students in the recent public school system who have brought up teachers that do not know the topics they are teaching.
Many jobs are in demand in Hawaii. Almost every corner is hiring. Though a few small businesses are picky about staff, public schools seem to hire anyone willing to deal with teenagers to get paid. Having just any person “teach” children and youth should not be permitted.
Though love and care for the students is important, so is the quality of education. Test scores show that Hawaii students are far behind compared to the rest of the country. Each family and household is different and should be taken into consideration, but the access to true information being taught by someone who has studied and researched is not well known to the islands. Teachers were students once too, so there seems to be a cycle.
Online classes are not the solution for every student, so what else is there? If teachers are going to be paid with tax dollar money, there should be a standardized test for those applying. They must know the subject before the school year starts and have a curriculum that is reviewed and voted on by parents of enrolled students.
All youth have the potential to become great, so we should provide them with the tools and resources they need.
Now is their future.
Jazzy Douglas
Keaau
Stop shaming those who are homeless
Despite how much we say in Hawaii that we value community, equality and spreading aloha, there is still a lot of stigmatization and hate toward people in poverty and those who are homeless.
With the cost of living in Hawaii seemingly rising every day and more and more people at risk of becoming homeless, why do many people in our community stop treating or acknowledging them as human beings?
Why do people assume that those in poverty are in their situation because of their own faults, that we shame them for being in this situation because “they are addicts” or because “they are lazy,” yet we don’t want to help them out of their situation?
Why is there still shame for being in these horrible situations that they obviously didn’t want to be in?
No one wants to be in poverty or be homeless, and no one purposely wants to stay in that kind of situation. The least that our community can do is to stop shaming or looking down upon people due to their circumstances and judge based on false assumptions.
We need to spread more awareness about the reality of poverty and homelessness in our community to prevent this spread of stigmatization.
Tehya Sugai-King
Hilo