Wisconsin's Public Schools Under Siege
This week’s guest perspective comes from Trygve Danielson—a school teacher at Parker High School in Janesville, Wisconsin for almost 40 years. Danielson gave the following speech at The State of Rock County Rally on January 26, 2012 as an educator's response to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s State of the State Address.
I was raised on a small farm in southeastern Wisconsin. Neither of my parents graduated from high school, but they believed in the American Dream that if you got a good education your life would be better.As a result, all of my brothers and sisters, all seven of us, went on to college. One retired as the principal oboist of the Seattle Symphony, another was a pilot for United Airlines, one was a nurse, one a steamfitter, and three of us are teachers. All products of two, decent, hardworking Wisconsin farmers whose kids were given the opportunity to attend Wisconsin’s public schools, one of the finest school systems in the country, even in the world.
But today that school system is under siege. I have been asked to speak today about the