“Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid.”
― John Wayne
― John Wayne
Being a
teacher, I have plenty to say about this idea.
Of course, there are different kinds of stupid I need to acknowledge so
you know where I stand on such things.
Stupid ranges all the way from simple ignorance of the facts or life
skills due to lack of exposure, all the way to the willful ignorance and
idiotic behavior regardless of training and as a result of willful disobedience
to natural law. The latter of these has
natural consequences often summed up by facial tattoos featuring cartoon
characters or misspelled affirmations, the inability to string five words
together without the crutch of profanity, or a perpetual blank stare in
response to any question requiring the smallest amount of critical thinking or
curiosity. However, the first kind of stupid,
that of simple ignorance, has a marvelous cure, and that is a basic education
provided by the state free of charge if one so desires. I am writing in defense of that free
education. After all, I am a teacher in
a public school and I have an instinct for self preservation, right? Unfortunately there is a war underway against
a fair and adequate public option regarding the education of our citizenry
which compels me to speak up above and beyond the threshold of self preservation. Part of what I am going to say will be an
attempt to dispel what I think to be a myth about education and part will be an
attempt to point to what I feel is the real problem facing education. At no time will I claim anything research
related other than to point at problems of perceptions. Everything you read will simply be my own
ideas.
I was
educated in the 1970's and 1980's. As
such, some people might be tempted to think I am going to tout how stringent my
education was compared to that of public schools today, that the students today
do not care as much about their education as I did when I was in school. Well, I am not going to go down that
road. It might surprise you to learn
that contemporaries of the great Greek philosophers make the same complaints
you hear today: That the youth of Athens no longer cared about their educations,
that the standards of education have slipped.
It has been something every generation laments and a common complaint
for more than 3,000 years, so I doubt that's the problem with education. I mention my age to highlight the
transitional place I hold within recent education trends. I was in high school when computers were new,
and before the advent of cell phones.
And while I teach now, with the inundation of personal technology, I
have to tell you it is my firm belief the students have not changed, but rather
it is the world which has changed around them and that those changes have
created false impressions by those who are in a position to make changes
regarding education.
You can't
swing a dead cat without hitting a study, a parent, or a legislator claiming
some fundamental flaw in education exists, which if left to its own devices,
will destroy the United States of America.
"Test scores are down, internationally." "Our children lack real-world
skills!" "Teacher unions are choking our economy and schools." "My child cannot pray in
school." "Children don't care
anymore!" "We need to step in!"
"The federal government needs to butt out!" "Charter schools are the
answer!" "Charter schools are
not the answer!" Take your pick or add your favorite to the list. They say admitting a problem exists is the
first step in solving the problem. Well,
what if the problem is that too many people think the answer to fixing
education boils down to fixing one issue?
What if the problem is too many people are only willing to look at the
issue from their myopic perspective?
What if the problem is that our culture is the victim of it's own
education system and is no longer interested in accepting some issues are too
complex for a 10 minute solution?
You see, that's
what my point is. I think we have
forgotten as a culture that there is more than one perspective. We have become polarized beyond the point of
seeing the complexity of an issue. We
want the simple fix. We want something
or someone to come along and tell us everything can be fixed with a single
program or shift in procedure. Well, it
can't. Let me make this easy for you:
·
Many foreign nations only test and publish the
results of their best students.
·
Many foreign nations do not even offer education
to all of the population.
·
No profession with an average starting salary of
36K/year has the potential to strangle the economy.
·
When it comes to bad teachers remember this: You
rarely hear stories about good teachers because they don't make for
entertaining stories on your local news.
·
If you feel the one flaw in your child's school
is that your child is being deprived of religious freedom in the school because
of a lack of mandated prayer, please tell me which prayer is appropriate in a
pluralistic nation.
·
Do you really think children in the U.S. are so
different than those in other nations?
They do care, but they just care about different things than those who
are observing them. They have real world
skills, but again, those skills are different than the ones we learned at their
age.
·
The Federal government is problematic, but
necessary to ensure there is an equity and fairness regarding education. Without it, very few states or communities
would enforce equal employment standards or pesky laws like Title IX.
·
If you object to the money being spent by the
DOE, there is of course evidence which suggests money doesn't make a
difference, but then again, not all investments can be measured in dollars.
·
Charter schools, when run well, can offer an excellent
alternative for both parents and students, but in many cases do not perform any
better than district run public schools.
There is no simple and straightforward truth to be had in
the realm of education. Nothing you
point to can fix everything in education with one, sweeping reform. No Child Left Behind was based on cooked
books from the Dallas, Texas School District.
Common Core runs on the incorrect assumption that all students have the
ability to learn concepts at the same pace.
For a
moment, let's look at the current trend.
Some people look at the Common Core standards as an encroachment upon
local communities to decide what is best for their kids, and from what I just
said, one might incorrectly assume I said the same thing just now. Well, I didn't. There is a huge difference between the
political agenda of centralized authority
and decentralized government control of education and that of an assumption
regarding the abilities of students. Common Core is not flawed because it seeks to
bring up what has been popularly coined as "rigor" into the schools,
nor is it a sin to try and require that all U.S. schools maintain certain
minimum standards for teaching critical thinking skills, core subjects and
assessments. The problem with Common Core is that it robs in
part the true professional his or her ability to determine what should be
taught to a particular student or group of students regarding a specific
concept or skill. It limits the very creativity
it proclaims to instill through its methods.
Again, the
problem as far as I can see, is perspective.
Too many people who are not educators have too much say and control
regarding education. Legislators who
have not spent more than an hour in a classroom since their own
primary/secondary educations look at the situation from their limited
perspective, colored by their political agenda, and make decisions regarding
how best to educate students they will neither know or even meet. Another argument against the Department of
Education? No. Without the DOE, urban and rural students
would be shortchanged funds vital to providing a well rounded education, and in
some places any kind of basic education.
But before
you think I am simply going to turn myself into some Education vigilante and
this short essay into a manifesto, teachers need to let go of their tunnel
vision, too. They need to get off the
cross they have nailed themselves to and donate the wood to Habitat for
Humanity. Teachers need to realize that
just because they are professionals caught in a widely derided profession, it
isn't an excuse to ignore the concerns of those who are not educators. Of course there will always be parents who unfairly
threaten to bring lawsuits against the school district if their precious
snowflake of a child fails a class, but that is not a product of the education
system. It' a product of that second
kind of stupidity, and if one believes in science, then the problem is usually
self correcting. Teachers need to
recognize new programs like Common Core and NCLB are born out of a misplaced
frustrations. If teachers are real educators,
they need to be willing to teach people (not just the students on their roll
sheets) that complexity is not something to be feared. And while it begins in the classroom, it is
not a single front issue. Teachers need
to be willing to discuss complex issues whenever and wherever it arises. Teachers need to abandon the "it's not
my job" attitude which allows people to continue perpetrating so many
harmful myths about education.
Summation: Education is too complex an issue to be
solved by any one issue. Everyone
involved in the education process needs to own up to their responsibilities and
needs to recognize there are far too many perspectives for single issue
solutions. Parents, do you want your
kids to learn more? Demand more from
them. Hold them accountable for their
poor decisions regarding education.
Demand more from teachers while understanding teachers have been given
rules and regulations which increasingly limit the flexibility sometimes needed
to meet the needs of any one student. Understand
that when you treat a teacher like a babysitter and expect the teacher to
shoulder all of the responsibility in your child's education, it's like asking
a stool to stand on one leg. Teachers, do
you want parents and students to take the education process more
seriously? Demand more from them but
understand that parents do not understand education the way you understand
it. They view education like a
patron/client relationship because so many other aspects of our culture fall
into that structure and they do not see the value of education as something
which may not manifest itself for decades.
Parents want measurable results, and students will seek the easiest path
you give them. Don't pretend to be
shocked when they pull out the stereotypical 'bad teacher' narrative to try and get their way. Legislators, do you want to improve education
in a genuine and meaningful way? Stop
pretending to be the "Education Candidate." Everyone knows you are full of bullshit. Remember this: Almost every South American dictator in the 20th Century had a two item
platform---educating the children and getting the trains to run on time. Stop pretending that legislation can fix
education. Stop pretending you can fix
education by bullying teachers, parents and students. Make legislation which protects rights and
creates opportunities.
Everyone,
want to fix education? Stop pretending
there is only one perspective or values system with merit. Start looking and listening to each
other. Stop thinking there is virtue in
willful ignorance of the realities which face us regarding education. There are some genuine, honest-to-god
problems in education which need to be solved, but none of them will get solved
if we don't first accept complexity as a constant, and our own ignorance as the
real variable. Remember what Truman
Capote said. "It is no shame to
have a dirty face. The shame comes when you keep it dirty." It's time to wash our faces.
