READY, FIRE, AIM: There’s Nothing Worse

I ran across a Letter to the Editor in a national newspaper (which will remain unnamed, for reasons that will become obvious) written by a concerned citizen (who will also remain unnamed, for equally obvious reasons.).

To judge by the author’s name, I’m guessing he’s male, and probably around my age.

I’m also a concerned citizen, which is probably why his letter caught my attention.

He wrote, in part:

My mother, who is 83, worked as a teacher assistant for kids with poor reading skills and behavioral issues. She had been selected as the teacher assistant of the year, yet she recently received her termination notice. Why?

Because the “One Big Beautiful Bill” cuts education funding…

I was one of those kids, back in the day, who had behavioral issues, and who needed to meet regularly with a teacher assistant, although I can’t recall any of those assistants being 83 years old.  But they were often at least old enough to be my mother, and most of them had what I would call ‘motherly instincts’ when dealing with a kid with behavioral issues.  Though, not all of them.

I eventually learned to read and write well enough to be able to plagiarize essays for my high school English classes, which then qualified me for a job as a journalist.

Now the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ has apparently resulted in our schools laying off 83-year-old teacher assistants, leaving the kids, struggling with behavioral issues like I had, with no real option but to sort things out on their own.  Good luck with that approach!

And just when the national crime rate was on the decline…

The letter went on:

I wish the individuals responsible for protecting federal funds from waste and fraud had done a better job evaluating legitimate programs and blocking and removing those with no academic value. The only option is for state legislators to conduct a line-item assessment to select what has proven results vs. those that do not.

There is nothing worse than telling an 83-year-old woman her job has been terminated.

I think we can all admit that terminating a 83-year-old teacher assistant is a terrible thing.  Especially, an award-winning 83-year-old teacher assistant.

But can we really say, that “there is nothing worse?”

What about terminating, for example, an 84-year-old teacher assistant?  Or a 90-year-old teacher assistant?  Wouldn’t be even worse?

And now that I really think about it, it’s probably worse to terminate a 25-year-old teacher assistant, because they would have another 60 years ahead of them, helping kids with behavioral issues.

We all know how important education is, but aren’t there things worse than terminating a teacher assistant, of whatever age?

Like, for example, dismantling the entire U.S. Department of Education?

Or worse yet, dismantling the entire federal government?

How about, like, a nuclear war?  I think that would be worse than terminating a teacher assistant.

Maybe we shouldn’t even be talking about nuclear wars, considering the current state of leadership in the countries with nuclear weapons. But I was simply trying to put the phrase “there is nothing worse” into a healthy perspective.

I hope now you can see why I didn’t mention the name of the newspaper where I found this letter, and also, why I kept the author’s name anonymous.  There are so many exaggerated claims floating around lately — and I fully understand why, knowing that certain leaders of nations with nuclear weapons obviously struggled from behavioral issues, as kids , and the teacher assistants weren’t able to help them.

That being said, my heart goes out to any teacher assistant who has recently lost their jobs, no matter how old they might be, and to the future politicians who are right now in school, struggling with poor reading skills and behavioral issues.

I would never want to see a person with poor reading skills and behavioral issues to be leading any country that possessed nuclear weapons.