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Do Teachers Lack Power and Self-Worth?

By Anthony Cody

My 85-year-old mother is an inveterate clipper of newspaper articles, especially from The New York Times , which she has had delivered to her home in Berkeley for the past 40 years. Now the Internet has allowed her to send me clippings by e-mail, although she still keeps the scissors ready and hands me a thick folder every time I visit. This week she sent a provocative quote from a New York Times Magazine profile of well-known financial guru Suze Orman.

The writer of the article explains why little of Orman's work involves schools:

She has been reluctant to work on school curricula involving personal finance because she says students can't learn empowerment from people who aren't empowered, and teachers, she says, are too underpaid ever to have any real self-worth. She told me, "When you are somebody scared to death of your own life, how can you teach kids to be powerful? It's not something in a book—it ain't going happen that way."