Teachers, instill the value of voting in your students
By The Bakersfield Californian
While sitting around with some of my friends from the League of Women Voters, we began talking about the low turnout for the last election. We are so lucky to live in a society where we can help to choose our leaders and to select the propositions that we think will be best for us, but too many of us seem to be too busy or too lazy and we like to think that all will be well in the long run and that our votes won't count anyway. It's pretty hard this mindset when humanity's long history shows that this option we have was so hard won, so bloodily won.
I happen to be a retired elementary school teacher who has never missed a chance to vote, and I've taught most of my students at some point during the school year that the main reason they were being educated at all was because an educated citizenry is vital to preserve the good life for us and that it would be their patriotic duty to be informed voters when they came of age.
I don't know how much of that rubbed off, but it was taught to me as a youngster and it's my wish and that of my LWV friends that every teacher at every level should be driving it into their students' heads that it will be their obligation to take advantage of their right to vote when they come of age. So, to the teachers who will be in the classroom in the fall, please be sure that your students understand this.
Irene Heath
Bakersfield
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