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State Legislature: Is coal okay for a teacher gift?
Photo Credit: Brittany Robertson
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December 20, 2011
Jason Frost, Copy Editor
Unfortunately for Alabama teachers, a new ethics law is going to ensure that teachers will not be getting their stockings stuffed this year unless Santa Claus himself decides to spring to the rescue.
It is well-known that the Alabama education system is rife with corruption- it’s been rumored that Scorcese’s even got a gritty new crime drama in the works- and a new Alabama law has been put in place to keep these gear-greasing, backroom-dealing educators in their place once and for all. This law, enacted last March, is forcing teachers to give up the fabled red apple that passes their desk every holiday season. In other words, teachers can no longer accept gifts from students or parents.
More specifically, however, they cannot accept gifts that they can turn around and make even a single cent off of (I hear gift cards are selling like wildfire on the black market these days). This means that, should a family want to honor the hard work teachers put into educating the next generations of Americans, they are going to have to stick exclusively to cookies and other items that have no resale value whatsoever. An obvious folly, as everyone has heard about back alley exchanges involving boxes of cupcakes and aluminum briefcases stuffed with money. After all, there is no possible way to challenge the ethics of a teacher who is accepting gifts from a student, especially if those gifts consist of lotion and a bouquet of roses. No wrongdoing here.
First and foremost, there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving a teacher a present, especially during the holiday season. It is the very least we can do for the men and women who scrape by on the miniscule salary they get from the state, most of which they reinvest in their students in the long run anyways. With the economy the way it is today, why not focus on more important legislative pursuits and leave our teachers alone? If the government says we cannot give them a gift certificate because they might engage in illicit activities, who is to say I might not go out and break the law because I got a birthday card last year? It played music and everything. The logic is the same in theory, but it proves to be quite illogical in practice (and theory too, for that matter). Teachers are the backbone of our nation, which is quite unfortunate because legislatures apparently do not have the backbone to stand up for them. Educators have already had their pay cut this year in addition to higher retirement costs, so why not keep that bus running while they are getting tossed under?
Even so, we must not forget that this law affects all state employees, and was initially passed with good intentions. Originally, it was instituted to keep lawmakers out of the vice grip of lobbyists and other corrupt sources of income (bribery, per se). Teachers, being employed by the state, unintentionally fell within the crosshairs as well. The best chance we have of opening their Christmas trees to the public once more is by hoping our representatives will find a way to slip in a couple of extra footnotes in that legislation to keep teachers back in the gift-giving loop. Let’s hope they do it soon, too, because I really need to bump up my Spanish grade and this Rolls Royce is starting to get dusty in my garage.
January 25th, 2012 at 11:39 am
It’s nice that there is someone who writes about these things. There are very useful.
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