Motivation needed for education

By Richard Rychtarik, Las Vegas

Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2014 | 2 a.m.

Hardly a day passes without a media reference to just how bad Nevada’s public education system is. Reporters rant about meager funding, poor English language skills, teacher salaries and class size.

This is accompanied by an assortment of ancillary success stories emanating from various charter schools.

Observing all of this should lead one to conclude that by raising teacher salaries, lowering class size and fixing the ESL problem will magically move Nevada from the bottom of the education heap to the top. If only it were true.

Back in the dark ages of education, when I attended school, there were several constants for success.

First and foremost was a keen desire of the parents that their children would be better educated. Due to the shortage of job prospects, many teachers were women; they were the best and brightest. Where they weren’t, they were very driven to educate and it showed.

In the end it didn’t matter if your teacher had a master’s degree or completed 106 semester hours at Arkansas State Teachers College. What mattered was motivation, a desire for everyone to succeed. These traits come from within and can be energized by others who openly demonstrate these characteristics, a sort of “yes we can” mob mentality.

The last national motivational initiative was during the Kennedy administration. How do we motivate the masses today when they seem to believe that dealing cards, cutting grass or parking cars is sufficient? I don’t know but hopefully someone out there does.