Ejikashun

I become very sensitive when I read "How to fix education" articles or books. Often, I agree with much in theory or ideologically, but de facto it is much more difficult than anybody imagines. Here are some reason schools are like they are:
  • Tradition is habit. Has all the populace broke that driving habit? Have they stopped eating those hamburgers? Those that break with tradition are small, angry groups bent on changing the status quo. Schools are some of, if not the, largest public institutions that exist. Old habits die hard.
  • Bureaucracy. Did the Republicans fix the federal bloat or add to it? How do you shrink a bureaucracy? Can you?
  • Socioeconomics. Face it. Our society right now if set up such that a significant portion of it is going to fail. For all the "pie in the sky" changes found in certain schools, they are almost exclusively in either wealthy, more-flexible suburban districts or in tiny charter schools. Add some miscreant poor kids of any stripe to the suburban school, or take the charter method to a larger populace and you will experience failure.
  • Culture. Take a look. The US is engorging itself on junk food, but also on junk culture. The Republicans have had field day preying on moronic middle 'murcah. Their acquiescence to anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-academia, anti-smart forces have made for a self-congratulatory moronic population. Our Leader-in-fucking-chief makes every effort to come off like a total idiot plays to his constituency, and this constituency wants standardize test-taking non-thinkers.
  • Dumb Teachers. I'm a smart, capable teacher. I entered the profession because I knew I could do better than most of my secondary teachers. In fact, a horrible Spanish teacher and horrible math teacher I had in high and middle school respectively were both teaching at my present school when I started. They were terrible, and still are. That said, I know of numerous loser, good-for-nothing teachers. That said, every office space and factory in this country is filled with both competent and good-for-nothing employees. KY is trying to recruit math and science folks. Why would you teach high-school math when you could triple your salary practicing accounting? Teachers have been too idealized. You don't need life-savers. You need solid craft-persons. Teachers can't save a broken-up divorced family. Teachers can't save a 2-income family that spends 0 time together.
  • Reality. Somebody needs to truly document, study, research and document our system versus Sweden's, Singapore's, Korea's, Germany's etc. This article, which I'll mention in a moment uses those as standard bearers. How are they similar or different? Are we comparing apples and oranges? What are their demographic, socioeconomic and racial similarities and differences? The Chinese are the ones coming to power. How do their schools work? I will bet you $10.000.000.000 that they sit around in stark rooms and do it by wrote, traditional means. That's their society but they're still the Bull in the closet, right?
Here are Time's suggestions, according to this article:
  1. Concentrate on Global Knowledge to better know the modern world and reality. ***. How can you disagree?
  2. Endorse and Promote High Levels of Competency.*. Have fun. States can't get people to achieve their lower standards now. Sure as f#$k middle 'murcah morons won't adhere to stricter standards. This is the land of the free!!
  3. Thinks outside the box.*. Great! Quantify it bozo. What does that mean? It uses Google and YouTube as examples. Will these two industries employ substantial numbers of citizens, or will a handful reap the benefits of Indians working dirt cheap?
  4. Use new sources of information more appropriately.**. Fine. Great. My school, the flagship school of my state, has 3 digital computer projectors in the library for all the teachers in the building who do not teach Math/Science unless you bought your own at $900 a pop. Did you just read that? I have a Pentium 2 or something that is 4 years old. I love this idea, but public schools have no chance keeping up on this one. I want to use the most appropriate, recent and up-to-date resources, but you're telling me I have to go the library and "fight" with, say, 60 other teachers to use 3 projectors, all of which have replacement bulbs that cost $250 a piece. Industry just passes that cost on to the consumers. Schools can't.
  5. Develop EQ, i.e. people skills.(no star). WTF? I can't really comment. Take a class in EQ? Learn to manage? Create schools full of MBAs and Salesmen? You got me. Those Chinese, they sure do have EQ!
  6. More about Global Education and the Blossoming of the I.B., Int'l Baccalaureate.***. My alma mater (high school) is now an I.B. school. If they had better positioned themselves, they would've attracted the talent that now comes to my school. Remember, Americans are selfish, jingoist assmonkeys, starting at the top with President-Select. That's my comment to that.
  7. What can you Google?.(no star) Don't learn anything you can google, such as "the important rivers of South American". I guess everyone can use their $75/month cell phone to look information up b/c they'll be focusing instead on their E.Q. That's right. Don't know anything, just research it from people who do.
  8. New Literacy.***. How to discern and analyze new media. I mostly refer to #4 here. I guess I'm supposed to spend all night burning and recording and printing "new media" for my students instead of typing my blog. Actually, I'm not going to spend all night doing that.
  9. Knowledge 2.0. (no star). sounds stupid. The example is about some dude in charge of Cisco systems who found a website about electricity and welding. Another WTF? Just drop out of school and use the internet as your school. Everything is true on the net, right?
  10. Reality.*. I shit you not, amidst all this New media, New technology, New Literacy, New Globalization, the author complains that students don't know how to shake hands.
I do a good job. I want to do a good job. I can't raise your kids. I can't pour aptitude into your kid's head. I can't raise his/her IQ. I can't close the widening socioeconomic gap in this country. I can't educate ignorant, dumb-ass Republicans. I can present material in a professional manner. If you want me to present the material in a flashier, "the kids can relate to new media" format, then give me the technological tools to do that and the time to F@#K with the hardware to adequately do it.

Any thoughts from my readers?

Comments

Anonymous said…
I understand your frustration. We get frustrated at our school, and it's full of "the elite," many of whom pay a whole ton of money to educate their kids there. (There are also a lot of us on financial aid...)

We're at the moment having this huge problem with a "cyberbullying" episode which did NOT occur at school, but happened between one girl and some other kids. We take it seriously, but as one teacher said today, if it didn't happen at school, why is it our fault? I do worry that schools are expected to do everything these days. I was talking with my husband about how we're working on revamping our "character curriculum," and he said he didn't want schools to do that, that was up to the parents, and he wanted schools to teach students how to learn, not morality or EQ as you put it. But it is true, all of this is indeed expected of schools these days.

One parent at a recent conference kept complaining that although his student was a good student, he lacked passion, i.e. he doesn't go above and beyond on his school work. The father wanted me to tell him the magic thing that would fix that. I said we could hold him to high standards, but we couldn't make him be passionate. I also said I, too, was pretty happy to coast through school, and it was good enough until I got to college. Maybe this kid will get excited about something at some point, or maybe he won't. The mom says this is this kid's balanced, laid-back personality. The father is a killer attorney who does not like this. And he's irritated that I don't have a "solution."

The biggest issue I had in public schools was behavior. I'm happy to teach kids who, even when they aren't excited, are relatively well-behaved at school. I was at a loss when students seemed to have no internal sense of morality, or at least civil behavior. Then again, society overall seems to have lost the concept of civil behavior, so why should we expect kids to be different?

I used to think I knew what was ailing public schools -- it's why I became a teacher in those difficult Philly inner-city schools. And after two years of it I quit, burned out. Most of the teachers I knew there were actually good teachers, but I couldn't find a way to deal with constant disturbances in class. There were bad teachers there, but not as many as you might think. I no longer feel I have an easy answer to the school problem. My son stays at the private school where I teach; we're moving to the burbs soon, with an excellent school district for when he gets to high school. I'll be another one of those middle class people "fleeing" the city... So much for my youthful idealism.

--Laura

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