Last week a young man strode into my classroom sagging his pants, flexing a chest tattoo beneath an undershirt and tilting a red cap across his scowling face.
Not like I've never seen that before -- but this was a guy I've coached for four years, a young man whose maturity and self-respect I've come to take for granted. I didn't think I'd be having to get in his face two months before graduation.
But that's how it is some times. And it shouldn't have surprised or disappointed me -- not any more than it surprises and disappoints me still when I read what politicians are saying about teachers and about our students.
Teaching -- especially in the inner-city -- is work that both consumes and isolates, and that can make it easy to forget, for a moment, what is going on beyond the walls of the classroom. Especially when the work of teaching gets a little easier, which sometimes happens with experience and enough success and longevity at a school to earn a positive reputation among the students -- and so it is sometimes jarring to suddenly have to prove ourselves all over again to someone who just isn't buying the rep or doesn't care.
Maybe teachers shouldn't have to prove anything to be respected in the first place but that's how it is, at least in this country where some public officials and others have taken it upon themselves to marginalize our positive impact and lay the inadequacies of our contemporary culture and economy at our feet.
These insults are what a thick skin is made for.
If sports fans think that buying a ticket or watching a game on TV entitles them to insult the players who've mastered the game, so then goes the logic of those tax payers and tax-spenders who've entitled themselves to pick on us. And though we might not -- like pro athletes -- get paid the kind of wages that would make the abuse seem worth it, there it is anyway and there might not be anything much we can do about it, except keep doing our jobs whether or not anyone recognizes us.
Educate this generation of children because democracy and freedom are not entitlements. Every generation must learn them and then earn them or we may ultimately lose them. And sometimes it seems we're on the verge of just that -- or maybe beyond the verge -- and that is why we should be screaming about the travesty of education dollars wasted outside of classrooms while the teacher lay-off notices pile up. Not because of the insult but because of the damage.
And as always we've got to find it in ourselves to minimize that damage -- visited upon us and our students by the economic cycle, government mismanagement, and Wall Street greed -- step up to the challenges of larger classes and fewer resources because students cannot wait for us all to sort out the politics and economics and ideology.
Just yesterday, that same young man I had to call out a few weeks ago with the sagging pants and the bad attitude handed me an acceptance letter from the state university and then put his arms around me and in his embrace was a thank you and a plea to keep helping him get ready to live up to the promise of that letter.
Our work is not done.
It never is.
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What was not mentioned at the time, and is now becoming apparent with the opening of the Fed's private bank books, is how much money taxpayers shoveled to these VERY EXPERIENCED Wall St. executives.
Exactly what did the level of their experience have to do with the financial rescue?
Couldn't we have paid a recent Wharton MBA 1/100 as much and achieved the same result.
Is there any connection, anywhere in this economy, between experience and higher pay.
Please, show me.
This logic CAN BE USED IN ANY LABOR MARKET AGAINST ANY ENEMY OF OUR CHOOSING.
Read Matt Taibbi's article in the Rollin Stone about the Wall Street bailout to fully understand their full court press attempt to distract the public from this recently released information.
Their tactic is to wage a war on teachers to redirect the rage of the public from Wall st. If one looks back to the origins of the TP movement it was populist, pro Main st., and absolutely anti-capitalist and Wall st.
It has been co-opted by the right to attack teachers.
Look at the recent Pew poll and public credibility. Journalists and investment bankers are at the VERY BOTTOM.
Teachers still rank near the top.
I would like to share with you the comments of one Chinese woman who completed her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana.
1. American students are lazy.
2. American students are not prepared.
3. American students are inferior to chinese students.
4. American students do not attempt to understand difficult concepts.
5. American students face no consequences for cheating.
6. American students seldom come to class.
7. Most immigrant students beat American students at public schools.
8. American students are not willing to wait for gratification.
9. American students do not bounce back from disappointments.
10. American students do not accept a grade less than an A.
There you have it. And she finished her scathing criticism with this last remark:
The USA needs me because it can't make its own.
With that I dropped my fork and said I had to use the bathroom.
The truth really hurts.
When I see bumper stickers that say - My 8th grader can beat up your honors student - I have to wonder about the attitude of these people towards education. And I do see these or similar bumper stickers.
While many see education as a road to good employment, I question what happened to education preparing students for a common discourse.
BTW - my state (NH) passed a law 2 years ago that students could not drop out of school until they were 18 - even with parental permission. For some, alternative learning could count towards a high school diploma - on-line courses, alternative programs or schools,night school, or creative individualized activities.
Guess what - the legislature just changed that law back to age 16 with parental permission!!!
They found the answers and remembred them more because they had to work to get those answers. Frankly, I wouldn't have a teacher's job on a bet - too many of them are trying their best to prepare students for the world outside of school by giving them the best instruction they know how to give, but are fighting parents, administrators, classes that are too large and budget cuts. I would love to see some parents, administrators, politicians try to teach some of the students now - might be an eye-opening experience for them.
I'm not sure anyone knows for sure what percentage of teachers are seat warmers -- and I'm not sure anyone knows -- but I don't disagree that they are out there doing their damage. How could I? I've had to work with them and see the miseducation they inflict on our students (in fact I've addressed the issue several times in previous posts, including the one before this one--http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-strauss/reform-this-improve-the-a_b_845796.html and this one -- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-strauss/why-teachers-go-bad_b_806231.html -- for which I took quite a bit of heat from other teachers)...
I have some ideas for how teachers might one day police our ranks -- which is a subject for a future post -- and I have certainly done my own personal share to rid my school of cynical and/or ineffective teachers over the years, not always endearing myself to my colleagues (although most of my colleagues feel the same way about the dead weight, whatever percentage that is).
I don't know what our "greatest enemies are" -- those who disgrace what we do or those who debase what we do? I'm not sure it matters, but your point is well taken.
On another note -- pun intended -- are you a devotee of the great Joe Henderson?
I learn something. (Bet you thought I would say something mean).
The last thing I want is someone like you telling me what to do. There is a pecking order in this society and I rank above you.
While I am no teacher I certainly know this: Those who bash their fellow workers are often those who know very well that their heads are ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK.
I have thought a few times about becoming a teacher, but then I steered away from it because of the holier than thou liberal arts teachers that run most public schools. They insist and adoration and obeisance from their students and inculcate a specific suspicion of anything scientific. It is in every way a war pitting the emotions of the liberal arts against the intellectual endeavors of science.
What our schools need is less of you, and more of me.
The sad thing is the pay stinks, but it is obviously good enough to keep you preaching in the classroom.
If I were to TEACH in Japan, I would earn much more than you do.
So be careful what you wish for. It may just be time to pay teachers like you, with run of the mill skills, a whole lot less.
I've always wanted to know the actual difference seeing how it's often brought up. I've googled it but unfortunately I cannot find any solid information.
I ask anyone of you that has never taught or have been in a classroom recently, spend a day and tell me what you think of teachers and what they face everyday.
A proud retired school teacher
What you want is Linda Darling-Hammond's book "The Flat World and Education: ..."
It has everything you're asking and more.
And she should have Arne Duncan's job.
My postulation is that the 2nd group(traditional) would rocket past the other group, I wish we could prove it and it become the great indictment of the present system.
Teachers and kids in the 50's didn't have to contend with overpowering and pernicious t.v. And, in the school district in which I was enrolled as a kid in the 50's and 60's, we had a very liberal education including social studies, art, music.
I don't understand what kind of curriculum you are espousing.
Careful. Saying such things can be dangerous around here. Anyway. our current education system is based on Horace Mann's awful idea of educating the country's citizenry. And he formulated his idea based on the Prussian system as enshrined in Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, in which he wrote:
"The new education must consist essentiallÂy in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossibleÂ. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty. "
Until we remove ourselves from this factory type of assembly line education, we'll never see meaningful reform.
It's heartening to know that others have looked into the history of education at least a little.
Our educational system does nothing to teach critical thinking, the understanding of individual civil liberty, and the concept of true freedom of thought.
Read your excellent article with interest. You hit the nail on the head. Somehow, the reason for educating America's young seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. It's our duty. It's our obligation. It's in the best interests of the country to educate children, otherwise the country will go out of business. That is, of course, not a problem for the well to do. Unfortunately, most of us aren't. Instead, we just throw away the poorer kids. What a waste! I propose a different way to run public education. I hope you will have time to read my paper on "Education Reform" on theamericanrevolutionnow.org. It's a non-partisan, non-profit.
Thanks,
Old Granddad
I agree, it is far easier and cheaper to exclude people instead of helping them reform their behavior to fit the acceptable mold, and a lot of your fellow citizens agree with you. It's probably why we lock up more non-violent offenders than any other country in the world.
At least 1% of the population are sociopaths that can not be reformed.
Bullies are cowards but they only show they are cowards when they meet resistance. I'm more concerned about the kids that are thinking about suicide because they are being bullied. You are obviously more concerned with how bullies are dealt with.