Peter Johnson's guest lecture last Thursday was very informative for many reasons. Peter Johnson brought with him a great deal of Maine political knowledge. Mills has spent time in both the Maine Senate and Maine House of Representatives and recently ran for governor of Maine. Today, Mills is the executive director of the Maine Turnpike Authority and was chosen for this position by Governor Paul. The most important insight Peter Johnson left us was his opinion and rationale for paying teachers more. I have a major in secondary education, so this insight was quite appealing to me. I would have to agree with Mills' opinion on this, but not just for the sake of paying teachers more. If we want our school systems to improve, paying more for teachers' salaries could certainly be a step in the right direction. I assume that if teachers' salaries were doubled, it would lead to an increase in the number of people entering the field of education. Presumably, I imagine that more people from science and math fields would enter the education field, because the way I see it, a lot of those people in those fields tend to migrate to higher-paying jobs. Therefore, this means that many of the nations best and brightest do not become educators. Rather, they would like a more extravagant lifestyle than a teacher's salary entails. Attending college for four years and then only receiving a salary of around thirty thousand dollars is demoralizing. This is not much above the poverty level and it takes several years to increase a teacher's salary. If merit pay, or simply an overall increase in salary, were adopted in education, then it would seem quite attractive and would hopefully create a positive effect. I know for a fact that if I were paid on merit, I would definitely do my best. It should not be forgotten, however, that not all students are equal in the cognitive sphere, so merit pay would have its problems. Some teachers may be putting in optimal effort, but students may simply be a factor in reasoning about why the difficulties are occurring. Many students with disabilities are integrated into kindergarten and I certainly can't see them at the same level as all the other students. One certain aspect that was discussed in our class and shared by Peter Johnson is that he talked about citizens' legislation and how it consists of very few rich.