Now, more than ever, teaching comes down to convincing students to buy in. Forget education degrees, what’s needed in classrooms are infectiously enthusiastic individuals who possess both subject area knowledge and an innate ability to connect with kids.

In short, it’s all about teacher quality, and we’re getting what we pay for, hence the sorry state of public education. Make no mistake — politicians are actively attempting to blow up the system in favor of vouchers and charter schools. They’re saying, “Yeah, we admit it — our education system sucks, and since we don’t really want to fix it, here’s some taxpayer money to help pay for your kid’s private school.”

With all due admiration — it takes a special kind of hubris to try to pass that off as being a good thing. But voucher and charter schemes are tawdry tales for another day.

We have to do a better job advocating the value of a well-rounded education in America. Kids and far too many adults simply don’t get it. Their overriding question is reasonable enough: Why do we need to know all this stuff? The short answer is that all this “stuff” provides a frame of reference that, in turn, provides relevance. When one lacks both, their little world becomes even smaller. Which would be fine, except that they happen to reside in my world, too.

Through English courses, we obtain the language skills necessary for effective communication; appreciation of literature — and other forms of art — allows us to discover things about the world and ourselves we might not have otherwise considered. Math shows us how to process information via analysis, precision and logic. The exploration of human nature via social studies encourages cultural awareness and understanding. Science attempts to explain natural processes via observation and experimentation.

Having an educated worldview puts experiences and events into perspective and encourages empathy, a commodity that’s always been in short supply due to a historical overabundance of self-centered jerks. It also makes watching “Jeopardy” more fun.

Death and taxes aside, one thing’s for certain: Fortune favors the literate.

Yet every year I inherit students — and I’m talking about those of a supposed upper-level ilk — who can’t read or write at grade level. How do they ever make it to me?

The primary reason is that administrators don’t look kindly on teachers with high failure rates, grades get inflated and underperforming kids are shoved down the line like proverbial hot potatoes. The remedy? At the risk of being ironic, things need to begin and end in elementary school, where students who aren’t performing at grade level are remediated until they’re ready to be promoted. If it takes intensive reading classes outside of normal instructional hours or summer school to get them up to speed, make it happen. We can pony up now or pay double as a society later, so just find the money.

Many kids aren’t into reading, and I get it — distractive technology rules the day. Then there’s, “Why read the book when we can watch the movie?” Watching is too passive, I tell them; reading gets you involved, it’s interactive and encourages you to use your imagination.

They look at me like I’m some sort of lunatic.

So-called “reluctant readers” have the capability to read, they just don’t know how to do it very well, which leads to two problems: (a) They become bored, and/or (b) They become frustrated in their efforts to piece words and sentences and paragraphs together, and books become symbols of their inadequacies, things to be shunned, not embraced. And because I require my students to read novels and because some refuse, those who choose not to read often fail my class, and their failure becomes my own.

When you read, you infer, analyze and evaluate. Not only do you become a better reader by virtue of reading, you become a better writer as well. You learn proper sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, spelling, voice, coherence and organization.

The key is having kids read high-interest fiction early and often, because if a student can read at grade level by the time they’re in middle school, their chances for academic success in high school and beyond are substantially increased. And, no, I don’t have any research to support that contention, it’s just basic common sense.

Earlier this year I wrote a column offering up this: Inspire more college graduates and natural salespeople to get in the educational game by paying every public school teacher a minimum of $100,000 a year with annual 3% cost-of-living raises and a sweet benefit package, do away with unions, get rid of tenure and give administrators the unilateral capacity to hire and, with cause, fire. Out with the old and ineffectual; in with the new and improved. Sure, taxes would necessarily go up a tad, but it would be worth it. Because a teacher truly makes or breaks learning.

I’d go on, but the bell’s about to ring — that’s it for today. Please remember to do your homework before heading out to the polls and make sure you vote for individuals who will bolster public education, not those who seek to undermine it to advance their own selfish purposes.

Chris Fulton teaches Cambridge Literature/General Paper classes at Tarpon Springs High School. He has been in the classroom for more than 25 years.