What the—? Education Rant, Part 2

This is one of the most offensive things I have ever read on the internet.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/claire-wapole/thirty-minutes-tops_b_3861853.html

Can you believe the nerve of this woman, who is poking fun at the person who is attempting to give her freaking kid an industry-standard education that she doesn't even have to pay for?

If you think you don't have enough hours in the day to teach your kids life skills, if the school day and its subsequent responsibilities are too much for you, I suggest you find an alternative, rather than turning the work that teacher does in the classroom into a joke.

I hate public education, and I hate homework, too, but give me a break.

A Rant on Education

Warning: this post is not politically correct. It might be snarky. It is probably judgmental. It might contain run-on sentences even (ouch—I have an English degree, and I know grammar and mechanics, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do). And I reserve the right to change my mind about any of it at any time. I apologize in advance if any of what I write here offends you. I'm open to criticism. I also openly admit to having occasional logic problems and trouble forming coherent arguments. Limited editing has been done, but because it's a blog, I'm not going to put in the effort to organize it better. Constructive feedback is welcome.

Few people annoy me more than the parents of special needs children. That is my problem, not theirs. I am working on repenting for this. They are carrying a burden I can't imagine, and I do feel an insane amount of compassion for them, particularly when I'm able to meet them as individuals. But I can't stand them as a group. Most of them lobby and "advocate" and fight emotional battles; they make a big deal about non-issues. And in the end, they end up forcing acts like IDEA that contribute to the destruction of everyone's educational experience.

After seeing two different friends from two different states post memes regarding education that are supposed to be common sense and clever, I can't not express my opinion somewhere, so rather than hijacking someone's Facebook status, I'm going to rant on my blog.

Apparently, Michael J. Fox says that if a kid can't learn the way you teach, maybe you should teach the way they can learn. Aw, that's so sweet.

It's also ridiculous.

Public education was never meant to be a customizable, boutique experience in which every child gets his or her individual needs catered to. It's impractical, not to mention impossible. If you want your special baby to have the kind of attention that requires, do it yourself. You know your kid. You love your kid. And you know what kind of direction your kid's learning can and should take. If you are incapable of doing it yourself, how realistic is it to expect the State to do it? How realistic is it to expect a teacher with a classroom full of little darlings, all of whose needs are special, to customize the learning experiences in a way that doesn't waste anyone's time and doesn't require the teacher to work him or herself into an early grave? AT THE SAME TIME implementing a standardized State curriculum that is designed to be a one-size-fits-all assembly line model to churn out people capable of choosing the best answer when presented with 4 alternatives. All of this on a salary that is kept necessarily low—because, after all, it is tax money, which means it is forcibly taken from other citizens and can't be compared to the salary of professional athletes because things like sports generate their own revenues (I strongly disagree with the proposal that, as things stand, teachers should get more money. That's dumb. And while I didn't argue with the school district that employed me as a teacher when they hiked my salary up my third year, I didn't ask for it and don't think it was necessary to motivate me. I would have worked just as hard for 5 grand a year less.)

And I'm tired of the complaint that "my kid's teacher doesn't care." Duh. The teacher probably doesn't. At least not as much as the parent does. After all, it's your kid. Even very gifted and compassionate teachers are only capable of a certain amount of "caring"—or emotion—in any given time. Expecting them to care to the level that a parent does for every single kid they teach is unsound. But we are a society of unrealistic expectations. We have been taught from the time we were little that "if you can dream it you can do it." So let's all just dream about a perfect government-run educational system that does everything right. It's still not going to help the kids.

Because—and let's set aside the question of whether or not the child actually has any real difficulties learning, or if it's nothing but a motivational problem (which, contrary to teacher training literature in these trendy times, does actually exist—and rather than dismissing that, it needs to be addressed by the family and possibly by a professional counselor, but not by a teacher). The child goes to a highly structured, highly regulated "learning" environment five days a week. This child, special needs or not, is not stupid. He is going to realize very quickly that the stakes might be high for him, but they are even higher for his teacher—because if he fails to make progress the way the State either arbitrarily or very competently measures it, the teacher is the one to blame. The teacher is the one who is not teaching the way he can learn.

Year after year of this is enough to kill anyone's motivation, isn't it?

These children who struggle early on are conditioned to think that if they can't do something or don't want to, it's everyone else's job to make sure that they do it. The teacher's attitude has to be, "I'm going to make you succeed whether you want to or not." Even a very sweet and intelligent child is going to develop an attitude problem in conditions like that. But that is what No Child Left Behind and all public education initiatives have done.

Related to this is the entire idea of taxpayer funded, compulsory education. It is not a right. It is not laid out this way in the Constitution.

An educated citizenry is essential to the well-being of a nation. Few people would argue with that.

But are we really creating an educated citizenry when there is no element of choice, and no motivation for students to take advantage of the educational opportunities we are cramming down their throats?

I'm going to share an anecdote. I have a very good friend. She is intelligent, motivated, and sweet. She had four children, and her husband was in law school, and their income was very limited. She made do very happily, but she wanted her oldest child to have a crack at piano lessons. I offered to teach him for free.

She was overjoyed, and so was he. I put a lot of effort into those lessons, because I liked the mom, I liked the kid, and I like music; and I was happy to be doing a friend a favor. But after a few weeks, he stopped practicing. His effort to implement what I was teaching him was minimal at best, until we decided it was time to discontinue.

Mom wasn't putting any effort into reminding him to practice, because she didn't have any stake in it (by the way, she is not a helicopter parent, and this is one of the things I respect the most about her. Incidentally, she decided more recently, and with 6 kids now, that her kids weren't getting the kind of education she wanted for them in the public schools, so she pulled them all out and teaches them herself now). Kid wasn't putting any effort into practicing because he got lessons whether he practiced or not.

I've experienced similar situations with myself. People are like this. Good, intelligent, motivated, sweet people are like this. If we don't invest in something, we have no intrinsic motivation to get anything out of it.

It is not my intention here to propose a comprehensive solution for basic education, although I'm sure I could come up with any number of options that are better than what we have. And I have a few ideas right now.

The first step would be to dismantle the Federal Department of Education. It is useless.

I think it would be a good idea to take away state funding and allow communities to come up with their own solutions. It's dumb to place the entire financial burden on the taxpayers without giving any responsibility to the families of those receiving the education, but if individual communities want to do that, I won't stop them.

In addition, if I were running a school, I would require enrollees and their families to sign a contractual agreement with the school. I can come up with specifics later, but it would involve some sort of obligation for parents and students to conference with teachers and administrators and proactively respond to teacher feedback. In other words, the student should have to prove that he or she wants to be in school and actually intends to take advantage of the opportunity that is being provided. If a child and the child's family fail or refuse to keep their contractual obligations, there should be penalties—such as suspension and expulsion. I am not opposed to requiring financial reimbursement for funds wasted on someone who does not intend to take advantage of the privilege of education.

This doesn't mean that parents shouldn't require the teachers (and administrators and paraprofessionals) to be subject to rigorous evaluation and professional development. That's a no-brainer. People in just about any industry are required to adhere to performance standards and evaluations.

There are understandable concerns with these ideas. I'm not going to anticipate all of them, but I will briefly address children with special needs.

They deserve the opportunity to receive an education just as much as kids without diagnosable special needs. Whatever negative things I say about the programs and procedures used for them has nothing to do with the value I place on these kids themselves.

But I still think that the burden of proving progress should be on the student and his/her family, rather than on the teacher. Nothing wrong with data collection and analysis. Nothing wrong with requiring proof of efficacy and progress. But a parent can do that. A child can do that. After all, they are the ones who live with the consequences of knowledge acquisition or nonaquisition.

So, I guess in a roundabout way, I do think that teachers should teach the way kids can learn—but they need to be allowed to require the student to make the necessary investment to be able to appreciate what learning actually is.

Judgment

I had a very interesting conversation this morning. It was almost a culmination of a lot of things that have been running through my mind lately.

We live in a society that places particular virtue on being "nonjudgmental". I think in many ways this is great. It is a good thing that people collectively recognize that a person who makes big mistakes needs love first and foremost.

But I also think it is damaging in a way. We have become so hypersensitive to what other people think of us that some of us have problems going anywhere or doing anything where someone might judge us.

The new rallying cry is "Don't you dare judge me!"

It is true. We are admonished by Jesus Christ to judge not, that ye be not judged. But what makes being judgmental so much worse than being a liar or a glutton, or a fornicator or lazy or going into debt?

Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, "I wonder how many people I can judge today."

It's unintentional. And the stupidest thing we can do is to allow someone who is being possibly judgmental (or maybe just has strong opinions about the way things should be and wasn't taking your personal behavior or feelings into account when they said what they did, because after all, you are not the center of the universe and there's no reason to take everything as a personal attack) to hurt our feelings.

If my feelings are hurt because someone judged me, that's just as much my problem as theirs. It's not my job to scream "How dare you judge me!" It's my job to say, this person made a mistake in judging me, and I can forgive and move on with my life.

And, further, when I find myself worried about being judged, most of the time it's because I'm worried myself about whether what I'm doing or saying is right. Or, even worse, when I want to be able to justify judging someone else for having different pet struggles or sins than the ones I have.

I am never more vulnerable than when I am reproachable.

Which means that pretty much if I am worried that people are judging me, I am probably being more judgmental of myself.

That is not at all to say that people shouldn't treat one another with love and consideration and kindness. Everyone is fighting a battle and we all need all the kindness we can possibly get. I am not defending unkind or judgmental behavior.

But I do think that our definition and practice of kindness, tolerance, love, and respect can be expanded and understood at a deeper level.

Identity Crisis ... Averted

I was told several weeks ago by a coworker that my hair isn't really red, that it's actually brown. In all seriousness and confidence.

Whaaaaaat?

Rarely have I been so puzzled. That's like telling Denzel Washington he's not black.

I'm pretty sure he would appreciate that as little as I did being told I'm not a redhead.

I don't support treating people different ways because of how they look, but ... uh, let's not water things down to the point that we pretend there is no difference in hair color and skin pigmentation. Was she trying to save my feelings by pretending my hair is a "normal" color?

As inconvenient as I have found it to be at times, my hair is red.

No getting away from that one. And why would I want to?

On the other hand, one of my Facebook friends shared a short article yesterday that claimed it was "Kiss a Ginger" Day. How nice.

At least one person I know got to celebrate it.