On the news tonight was a story about how the local school teachers all had to take a pay cut due to budget problems and it hit me like a ton of bricks. School teachers already make a horrible salary for what they do, and now they are taking away the peanuts they were already making? Sure that this must be a problem that is unique to North Carolina, I began to do an Internet search.

I quickly found out that this same scenario is being played out in schools and districts throughout the United States. Becoming a teacher is quickly becoming dangerous to your pocket book and nobody seems to be making much of a fuss over it. Why is that?

With all the stimulus money, and bail outs, and Federal funding that the United States has been embroiled in, how is it that one of our most valued resources are getting the short end of the stick? Why is the entire nation not rising up in anger at this travesty?

These are the people that are shaping those very minds that will sit in office someday. Without our teachers, we are a society that is second rate. No greatness can come about without a great teacher to mold and shape those minds. It was bad enough that they were making so little in the first place. To ask our teachers to take a pay cut is criminal in my estimation.

I realize that these are tough times. I get that. The fact remains, however, that we just signed over the next two generations worth of debt to the Government to divy out as they saw fit. How is it that our teachers were not in that equation? Surely the teachers deserved enough of that money that they did not have to take a pay cut for goodness sake.

For those brilliant young minds that are graduating college, it is a truly hard sell to talk them into becoming teachers in this economy. They would barely be making the minimum needed to even survive, much less thrive. That is not a good thing for the future of our Country. We must have young minds that are challenged and shaped by brilliance. That brilliance should not come cheaply, and certainly should not be bargain basement material. That is where we are headed if things do not change in this area.

The quality of teachers is bound to diminish if the pay continues to fall. No teacher can afford to work for the pittance that we are currently paying them. Those that do are true heroes in my book, and they deserve much more. Hopefully, between all the car companies and bank bailouts, our Government will see that fact and act.