The Tyranny of Technology

In a classroom of a flagship magnet school, a group of teachers were attending a staff development session meant to service teachers who planned to teach honors classes. Though the instructor had endless packets with graphs, studies, and charts debunking the myths of intellectual equality and reaffirming the bell curve, she had little to instruct beyond her packets. Like many mediocre instructors who conduct these insipid sessions for teachers, she peppered her lecture with hypothetical discussion questions that her packets would supposedly answer. In the beginning, she posed the banal educational inquiry, “What do you think students need today to succeed?” Teachers, more than anyone, will jump at the chance to participate in a class discussion; that’s why they become teachers after all. The first the first person to respond to this question was a middle aged woman who claimed to be a veteran teacher of over a decade. With a tone meant to rile up her fellow teachers for justice, she stated that, “Students today need technology! Students in schools that lack up-to-date technology will be at a huge disadvantage in our modern world!” This wasn’t the answer the instructor was looking for, but she readily endorsed this opinion and heaped further indoctrination that technology could save education today. The teachers that had any common sense held fast to the truths they knew in their heart, knowing that technology is a gimmick and a huge inhibition for students. Unfortunately, the majority of teachers internalized the garbage without a second thought.

For the past two decades, the push for technology has impoverished schools, intellectually as well as financially, but no one seems to notice. It has now become commonplace to think that a school will inevitably suffer without computers. Very few people seem to have the common sense to observe the notable absence of computers in schools of the past millennia and the continued progress of mankind. Newton could still invent calculus without a calculator from Texas Instruments. Voltaire could still satirize the most obscure instances in history without Wikipedia. Indeed, the works of difficult writers like Melville, Goethe, or Dickens, were read by whole populations of readers who had no access to a computer or SparkNotes.

Those with slightly more sense, though not much more, will continue to defend this norm of technology’s necessity with the statement that students have somehow changed mentally and biologically in their style of learning, and they now need computers to be engaged in the classroom. This reasoning satisfies that rationales of those still mystified with computers, internet, and cell phones, which constitutes a surprisingly large portion of teachers. However, for those familiar with these commonplace devices, this argument of cyborg children holds little weight. Computers do not physically alter a person’s biological composition; human brains are still human brains, so knowledge acquisition still remains a discipline. Although some desperately lazy minds (and their frustrated teachers) might desire it, machines will never think or learn for them.

Computers today will, however, successfully suspend thought like never before. While older generations might have used technology for practical functions like word processing and computation, the younger generations are now completely seduced by the computer’s impractical capabilities. Surfing the internet, playing videogames, or texting on the phone are ends in themselves rather than the means to constructive ends like producing an essay. Unless their livelihood depends on it, most people will use their computer for recreational purposes. Kids have learned to take this recreation to the extreme because adults foolishly let them. Young people are now prone to being completely distracted into their adult life because technology today tempts a person like never before. The unfortunate result that comes a lifetime of distraction is a fat lazy stupid person that can’t cope with reality. Hence, obesity, ignorance, and a need for foreign labor abound in the United States. The new generation does not learn differently; they are just much more unwilling to learn or practice discipline because of the incessant gratification that technology has granted them. A sad fate awaits this new generation if no one intervenes and stops their present lifestyle.

Schools can rightly claim the title of “learning environment” if they remove all temptations from students. Unfortunately, educators who demand more technology simply bring back those temptations. As soon as a student has access to internet he will immediately try to satisfy their vanity going to Myspace, or their lust by going to adult websites, or their laziness by going to game websites, or their immaturity by looking up an idiotic video or bad rap song. Every teacher who has taken his class to a computer lab will attest to this. Simply take away these temptations and students will be as bored with the computers as without. On the teaching end, the smart boards, ceiling projectors, and PowerPoint presentations, will engage the students just as well as a dry-erase board, an overhead projector and a few nifty posters. Thus, students will only show appreciation for technology when it leads to some kind of deviation from work or thinking. School should train kids to outgrow this kind of thinking, not encourage it.

Perhaps the last argument heard from technology advocates is that students must learn how to use computers in order to make it in this modern world imbued with technology. This argument has some validity but it must not consider computer literacy as an academic discipline in itself. Instead, computer literacy merely functions as a tool for already established academic disciplines. Like other tools, a person will learn to use it on their own if they need it for something. One can consider that nearly all adults in the United States use automobiles as a tool of getting places. When young adults feel the necessity to drive anywhere, they will learn how to drive on their own. They do all this without the help of school. Learning applications on a computer works out the same way. If the student needs to write something with a computer, they will teach themselves at home. Almost every person born in the age of personal computers has learned how to use computer applications. Only a miniscule amount of kids learn anything useful in a computer literacy classes apart from what they know already. Therefore, simply making an assignment that requires the use of computer with a one page manual (if necessary) would be the easiest way for a school to ensure a student’s competence with important computer applications. Unfortunately, today’s schools demand years of computer literacy classes that simply waste time and money.

The case against technology in schools does not arise from a Luddite fearful of a new invention, but from anyone who understands the functions of new inventions. In terms of education, technology has as little to offer to students trying to cultivate their minds as a supersized hamburger has to a person trying to lose weight.

Moreover, it’s expensive. Year after year, school districts will throw away money on computers that turn obsolete by the time they reach the schools. Then they will throw away money on expensive networks for these computers. Then they will purchase a firewall and anti-virus software (both of which are expensive but faulty) for those networks. Then they will purchase expensive “educational” software, half of which rarely see any use. Finally, they will create department of technology with multiple layers of bureaucracy to ensure some kind of maintenance of all these computers and networks. Naturally, technology consumes an ever-increasing portion of a district’s budget. All the while, basic maintenance for schools receives a diminishing fraction of that portion. As a result, more than a few teachers get to observe the quizzical contrast of working in a dilapidated school lacking decent plumbing or ventilation that is furnished with a brand new computer lab.

The continual descent of education in the past decades will show how many billions of dollars have been utterly wasted on this insidious gimmick. Districts need to stop seeing technology as some mystical solution to young people’s learning woes. To get to this point, teachers and parents in the district need to see technology as a tool for educated adults rather than a crutch for learning children. The middle age woman at the staff development meeting was painfully wrong. Students in the classroom do not need technology. They need to learn how to rely on their own brains, not computers, so they can thrive in this modern world.

End of the Year...

The Ghetto School

The idea of a school stands as something of a paradox in people’s minds. They will know school, often very intimately, but their knowledge means nothing because their school has changed drastically, often for the worse. In half a decade, student populations can double or triple; two dozen portables can eat up the extra space meant for the soccer field; minorities in a school can become majorities; the norm for student behavior can plummet dramatically; and only a tenth of whole staff remains to see it happen. This happens often, especially in growing cities. People today have yet to know what the average school is like, and this causes a serious problem. The primary obstruction towards serious reform in education frequently originates from people’s memories taking precedence over reality. In order to truly understand and correct the problems of education today, dutiful citizens must acquaint themselves with today’s school, otherwise known as the ghetto school.

The ghetto school’s name derives from the colloquial understanding of ghetto, which generally refers to a closed off community that is often crowded, ugly, and wrought with problems frequently related to ignorance and poverty. The ghetto school shares this meaning, but in an educational context. They are overcrowded, ugly, and wrought with problems due to the misallocation of funds and depleted brainpower from students. Students in the ghetto carry the dreams and ideals of peasants. Those dreams sadly derive from most of the garbage they inculcate from television, the internet, videogames, or the kids around them. Thus, instead of dreaming of the future and making their mark in the world, they dream of owning loud stereo systems, sleeping with the opposite sex, and acquiring hideous but expensive fashion accessories otherwise known as “bling.”

The primary attribute of the ghetto school that affects everything else is overcrowding. Public schools rarely have quotas, so their student populations have consequently exceeded capacity. Everyone suffers from this. Students and teachers jam themselves into a dank room, scuttling into their chairs since space for walking ceases to exist. The teachers will often share rooms with other teachers because the lack of classrooms. This forces some of them to pack all their supplies into a cart with which they “float” into different classrooms every period. In schools that truly bust at the seams with students, the auditoriums, cafeterias, and libraries will also serve as classrooms.

Naturally, the preponderance of children diminishes the authority of every adult as students organize into mobs letting troublemakers weave in and out of mischief with the protection of a boisterous crowd of adolescents. At this point, the school will forego many designated consequences because of mere logistical issues. Forcing detentions or parent conferences on kids with too many tardies, prompt intervention for failing grades or truancy, or simply keeping the halls clear of kids during instruction are unfeasible actions to carry out. While school efficiency plays an immense role in this system failure, the sheer number of students will sometimes make enforcement of basic rules near impossible. Consequently, a massive portion of students comes continually late if at all, fail classes, and loiter in the halls with impunity. Students that lack a strong guiding presence at home -and this is very common- are doomed in this setting. When given the choice to learn in a classroom or waste away time doing nothing or something illegal, these kids will always opt for the latter.

In this situation, school administrators will pick and choose what behaviors deserve a serious response and requires the least administrative work. This means that they often end up handling illegal activity only. This includes: fights, theft, drug abuse, drug dealing, vandalism, gang involvement, prostitution, and truancy (although this one usually ends up being an afterthought). Fortunately, the truly dangerous students will face some kind of resistance. The less dangerous students, who still eviscerate the learning environment, will fly under the radar and wreak havoc in classes. They will disrupt any semblance of order, shatter any expectation, and will deprive any student of feeling comfortable in class. They are the suicide bombers ready to bring everyone down to hell with them. They do this because, like suicide bombers, they know that destruction is the only thing they can do successfully. Destruction will make them known, the teachers learning their names before anyone. All the while, their world will not lift a finger against them because it does not want the responsibility. In vain, teachers will document and try his best to at least minimize the constant disruption and its degenerative effect on the class as a whole.

As a rule, ghetto schools always contain the shoddiest accommodations. They are poorly built and usually have the most wretched Soviet-inspired designs. The bathrooms suffer from bad plumbing that turns them into literal cesspools. The ceilings leak after rains. The fire alarms go off at random moments, effectively blowing out everyone’s eardrums. Students further assist matters by littering every corner, plugging up sinks and toilets to further flood bathrooms while defacing the walls, desks, doors, and pretty much any surface with graffiti.

Therefore, the deplorable physical setting will naturally take its toll on the mental and emotional setting of the ghetto school. Candidly speaking, school is often the place where dreams die. Students learn to lie, cheat, steal, and embrace despair. They put their heads down for hours at a time shunning work. They silence their minds in fear of the other students stigmatizing them. Those who had a chance, sit idly for hours because the work that the teachers assign is easy. In general, students learn how to not learn. Rather they seek happiness and meaning by destroying things or engaging in sexual relationships way before they have the proper level of maturity. They become parents, causing a blow to any future they, or their newborns, might have had. Teachers infused with passion and zeal for education harden their demeanors, gradually assuming the role of an unflinching cynics all too familiar with the mediocrity of their situation. Very few of them stay; most of them leave.

In the end, the ghetto school favors the worst from all groups. Only the idiotic students get by unscathed by the experience. Only the worst teachers pass the days without any murmurs from their clouded conscience. Only the most corrupt administrators keep the school running poorly without reproach from the outside. The rest just keep from perishing.

The atrocious atmosphere of these schools now force parents with any income will find a private school nearby or move out altogether. Hence, those without any means but many children populate the ghetto schools. Public schools in normal cities now primarily serve the poorer classes while the middle class has to pay dearly for their children’s education, either through living in an expensive suburb or finding a private school. In order to entice a few middle class white students, some ghetto schools will provide an honors track, which provides a protective bubble from all the surrounding trash. Unfortunately, even these bubbles sometimes pop and become corrupted over time.

Schools have changed enormously in the past decade. The ghetto school has ceased to be the exception found only in pockets of an urban community. It is now the norm. People that reminisce of their teenage years so many generations back need to look again. Otherwise, ghetto schools will expand and continue producing the people society deplores most: convicts and beggars.

Subbing and Retail

The Mission

In the movie, “The Mission”, Jeremy Irons plays the role of the missionary entering the Amazon to spread the gospel and civilize the savages. Viewers can recount the amazing trials and tribulations that the missionary went through to reach his lost flock in the jungle. He climbs up a waterfall with nothing but a knapsack and calms a tribe of hostile natives by playing his oboe. With time and unbreakable conviction, he raises the mission and the quality of life for the savages and an errant Spanish conquistador guilty of fratricide. Even the unbeliever will marvel at the determination of this missionary and his accomplishment. In the course of Western history, he was simply one of many to help colonize and civilize the untamed New World. The missionaries carried an unflinching resolve to lead a moral religious life and ward off the evil influences of barbarism present in both native and European cultures. Now that times have changed, modern secular educational institutions must assume these duties or watch the progress of the human spirit deteriorate.

The school needs a mission that fights the pernicious influences that abound in the world and at home. This has not always been the case in American society, but times have changed. A surprisingly large amount of parents have abrogated their parenting duties to instill morality in their young ones. Children today grow up without a code of ethics, a sense of the honorable, or an ideal. Atrocities that occur more frequently in the news confirm the deterioration of character; to name a few: school shootings, gang shootings (Chicago has more than 22 students killed on a school campus), student brutality, rising teen pregnancy, and unmitigated drug abuse. People shouldn’t make the mistake of likening today’s miscreants with lovable fabrications of Mark Twain, stupidly quoting, “Kids will be kids.” While they are still human, adults have let youth become morally barbaric (for lack of a better word) because they neglected their obligation to civilize. Reasons for this may happily fill the lucubrations of any periodical or blog, but the schools are the ones who need to cope with this challenge.

Unfortunately, many schools and educators will not acknowledge this challenge. This would naturally require more accountability and more energy than the current mission of most schools: Keep ‘em in the building and make sure the pass that stupid state test. The challenge of civilizing children would require schools to adopt measures that assume a new authority that oversees the academic and moral growth of each individual student. Schools shudder at all these measures because most of them have adopted “one-size-fits-all” approach that somehow leads to college. This approach is cheaper, easier to implement, and much easier to define. If any aberrations occur, usually among the extremes on the intellectual spectrum (the brilliant and the slow), the parents would normally supplement the school’s glaring inadequacies. Parents would also address the moral education of the students as well. Now that parents do not take on either of these responsibilities, schools must now adapt like missions had to adapt to the natives and take up the responsibilities themselves.

Successful civilizing measures contain these elements: flexible curriculum that allows alternatives for blooming adolescents, a discipline system that actually corrects behavior, and some indoctrination of values. All three elements feed into the other. A student freely and happily determines his fate when given the opportunity (alternatives) and the training (discipline). This student can embrace this training in usefulness and civic responsibility by having a strong set of priorities and values (indoctrination). Almost every successful educational institution in the world follows these three precepts, and it’s time that the United States follows suit.

Naturally, instilling these three aspects will meet with some objections that, however deleterious, hold sway in the educational conscience of the United States. People argue that promoting each of these parts would somehow diminish equal opportunity as advertised by the present educational system.

Detractors will say that creating alternative tracks prematurely posits a social hierarchy that denies an all-including route to higher abstract education. They overlook the fact that many students do not need to go to college for what they choose to do in life. They also hold a quixotic assumption that all students can do college work, which they cannot. This one-track goal, weakly held by students and educators alike, actually limits the freedom a person can choose in their profession and simply wastes time and money for an end that could be reached at an earlier time.

Similar objections are used in implanting a discipline system that corrects bad behavior. Detractors will claim that this should be done by the parents. They will also claim that actively correcting a person’s behavior might hurt their self-esteem and traumatize their educational experience with exaggerated personal anecdotes aplenty. Above all, they will always question whether the behavior even requires correction. However, schools uselessly rely on parents who in turn rely back on them for discipline, so the school still has the problem. Correctional measures will always overrule inaction or temporary isolation. Bad behavior usually spawns from a low self-esteem and often serves as an indicator that the child indirectly craves real (not fake) encouragement that comes with a correction in behavior. Harmful or disruptive behavior endangers the student as well as the students around him or her. Their education suffers; their view of school suffers (humans naturally desire order over chaos); and they suffer from emotional and sometimes physical distress. Both academic and social problems should be addressed with discipline that can correct it. As everyone averts their eyes, the disruptive students will either wreak havoc on a classroom, or they will be taken away and sent through a disciplinary system that further abets delinquency and eventually leads to a life in the penitentiary. This situation should never even arise if it were fully addressed early in life.

Modern citizens of the United States have learned to shudder at the word, indoctrination, especially in the context of their children. However, there is really no better way to describe the process of creating a moral and academic foundation for a developing human bring through constant and unremitting exposure. In some cases, parents believe that such a drastic move in creating an objective good and bad in a person limits the poor kid’s freedom, so they go ahead and spoil their offspring, hoping daycare or school can do it for them. In a majority of modern situations, the child will often lack a responsible parent, let alone two parents, to indoctrinate them in a wholesome moral upbringing. In any case, parents forget to realize that this formative part of a child’s upbringing will come from some other source if it doesn’t come from them. Many adults shun their duty to inculcate virtue; children now receive their indoctrination from undesirable outlets like videogames, Internet, televisions, or thugs on the street.

The school now serves as a bastion to culture and tradition whether people care to acknowledge it or not. These cultural and traditional values that have brought civilization’s greatest achievements should rest in the mind of every developing adult. Like missionaries that viewed savagery and faced it with absolute purpose, educators must now face a new savagery devoid of consciousness and responsibility and face it with the same resolve. In the past, the wills of missionaries helped society ascend from the Dark Ages. In the future, the wills of teachers might need to prevent a frightening return to those Dark Ages.

Based on a true story...

Got to admit, it's getting better...

We’ve hit April now, and I feel like I’m hitting my stride. The students have calmed down. The potential dropouts have either grown out of it or finally dropped out. Those extremely dysfunctional students now warm the seats at the alternative campus or have been finally rescheduled by the counselors. My classes have started on The Pearl by Steinbeck. Right now, I feel completely in control.

This wasn’t always the case. Many different challenges plagued each day. After freshman thaw from the first shock of high school during those first few months they can really be a thorn in the side of a young teacher filled with hopes of changing a student’s life. The multitude sway in the direction the disruptive kids blow. The disruptive kids try to establish their territory and are happily cultivating the disciplinary records with perpetual flare, triumphing in a teacher’s failure to teach. Students report to class tardy, disheveled with attention to the latest ghetto fashions, and without supplies. Coming out of summer, everyone flaunts with pride just how stupid, lazy, and destructive they are. Those with a gram of maturity hide it for fear of their lives.

For a teacher, even a new one, this situation is not impossible. I had strategies to neutralize the rotters, to pacify the most active disruptors, and to push the recalcitrant yet pliable multitude of students. Still, employing these strategies never assured a calm day. I remember almost everyday dreading at least one or two moments that I know would arrive. There were a group of students that I knew would raise a scene that would wreck my class’s attention and my authority into pieces. Like a general planning his next move, I played a chess game that anticipated the moves of these problematic children strategically placed in my class to make my job that much harder. Other times, I would worry about the acceptable format of lesson plans, staff development sessions, the growing number of rotters sleeping in my class and failing, the frustrations of teaching reading to adolescents still struggling with phonics. Somehow, I made it and kept my cool. I credit getting a sufficient amount of sleep (this was vital), and those close to me serving as sound boards (this was even more vital). Unfortunately, I got to see some others break down under the strain.

Throughout the first semester, I tried and retried different methods of teaching the students about plot, about characters, about setting. I reviewed these terms, modeled them countless times. Repetition was my middle name. I lectured and brought out real world examples. Two thirds of my classes defied the odds and made good progress. Still, my last classes in the afternoon would always manage to dampen my outlook on the day. The students in my 4th and 8th periods (it’s a block schedule) never finished their assignments. I could prod them, explain every question, hint at every answer, but they just languished like cows in the field. A few of them are roused into some kind of activity now, but they still could do better.

Like a composer listing his monumental operas (think of that movie, Amadeus), I like to list my novels that my students have successfully finished: The Outsiders, Animal Farm, and hopefully in a few weeks, The Pearl. Between these, the kids have hustled their brains on short stories, newspaper articles, essays, and vocabulary and grammar exercises (much of this material, I had to write up myself). I’m happy to say that all my classes have expanded their vocabulary and comprehension, becoming better readers and thinkers. The time it took in the beginning for 10 pages ranged around an hour (yes, that long!), now that has been cut in half with more of the material retained. I have been able to eventually sneak in some more mature concepts and higher level thinking with a better reception. Quite a number have finally touched the big black monolith and discovered Reasoning. With this, I keep on chugging, knowing that I have made a difference and that I'm doing a pretty swell job teaching, so I can’t stop now.

Over the year, I find it interesting how a separation emerges between classes because of the dynamics of the students. The level of progress between my two best and my two worst classes fascinates me and confirms a few notions I’ve had about the impact bad and lazy kids can have on a class. To put it concisely, they’re disastrous. A disruptive lazy kid can hold back months, even years, of academic progress the adjacent students might have. They stop activity, delay instruction, annihilate motivation, and will utterly demolish a teacher’s will to help those struggling.

Case in point, I have made substantial progress in my morning classes (1st and 5th), which now prompts me to make a higher track for them with more novels and more opportunities for analytical discussion. The kids are polite, they work, and their minds and abilities have grown substantially. They can rise above my current work. My two worst (4th and 8th) have made the least progress though I’ve worked the hardest with them. Those two classes account for at least 80 percent of my failures for all six of my classes. They are the most recalcitrant towards any new material and they carry very little motivation. The relevance of my material, the failing grade awaiting them, the disappointment of their parents, and the damning stamp of stupidity; all those things have only change a few of their habits. For them, I’m considering a lower track that they might be able to follow, but I almost think this is amoral. They aren’t that different from my other students; they’re just immature and suffer from some dead weights in the class.

One of my duties as teacher is to isolate, mollify, and hopefully extract these bad influences. Like a ruler punishing criminals, I have to punish the bad kids. Those who aren’t in a school in any capacity will assume I’m just a vindictive teacher out to get those free spirits. Where I work, my bad kids are ones that flirt with crime and dropping out, and many of them come from severely wrecked homes. They thrive on violence, aggression, disorder, and emotions. They’ve never been taught to think or to take responsibilities for themselves, but that have learned to make excuses. They need help in the worst way, and sticking them in my classroom only fuels the fire instead of stopping it. A suitable alternative for these kids needs to be developed so this growing number of children doesn’t end up in prison like they do now.

For now, I’ve done pretty well to keep my classes calm and the students have started listening. Even fourth period is starting to turn around. A teacher once told me that Thanksgiving break will be a teacher’s low point in the year, and that by Spring Break, things will start becoming pleasant. This has been true so far. With only six weeks and a bit left, I can say that this year has been frustrating but somewhat illuminating. There are problems beyond my control, so I can only write about them. Just read this blog. Still, through all the miasmic cynicism that looms in a low-performing urban school, I know that there’s still a good part to salvage.