The English Teacher

The Art of Reading

2009-08-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Many people often make the mistake of considering reading some sort of skill that can be learned and known forever after. Like fixing a flat tire on a bicycle or operating a dishwasher, they think that they can simply do the activity without having to really think about it. If reading really was such a simple activity that a person could know how to perform after the first or second grade, schools could easily do away with the ten years English classes that students still have to take afterwards. Unfortunately, reading is not such a simple activity that one can simply “know how to do.” Rather, reading is an art comprised of many separate skills, and it requires incessant practice and training to sufficiently master it.

Mastering reading does not arrive quickly to even the most talented reader. Every student must start as a beginner learning the sounds of letters and identifying words before they even start reading actual stories or articles, let alone whole sentences. A person cannot skip steps in this learning process, or they will struggle greatly in understanding what they see on the page. For this reason, beginners of reading start with short books with short words that rhyme (this helps a person learn the right pronunciation of words), short simple sentences to accommodate slow readers, an easy story with very few details or ideas, and big pictures to reinforce the meaning of the text. Once a reader can get through these simple books, they can progress to longer books with bigger words, longer sentences, and fewer pictures. These books will also require the reader to learn new skills that go beyond vocabulary and phonics (sounding out words) because these books will do much more complex things with language, compositional structure, and ideas. Highly advanced levels of reading will feature dense books that often manipulate and push the boundaries of language to present very complex ideas and challenge the reader to use many techniques for understanding. Getting to this point in reading which is necessary for college or professional studies, usually requires many years of practice and instruction.

When failing to understand that reading is an art, readers develop an attitude that they can avoid the practice and instruction necessary to improve and still somehow read more challenging texts. They might learn the basics and enjoy his picture books, but they will stop at that point, thinking they have learned enough. Once they are asked to read classic literature as a young adult, they will find out the hard way that they cannot do it. They will not understand many of the words, they will find it hard to follow the ideas and the story, and they will generally get very little meaning or enjoyment from the book. Although years have passed, and these readers are technically older, their minds have not grown, and they read at the same level they did when they were much younger. They will either have to change their reading habits (or lack thereof) and catch up, or suffer from ignorance for the rest of their lives.

A reader must learn many different skills to sufficiently understand and remember what he reads. For example, a beginning reader must first identify the correct pronunciation of words and the roles of punctuation marks like a beginning artist learns about lines and shapes. In understanding more complex fictional texts, a reader must learn different skills like outlining basic events in a story, identifying a character’s qualities, determining word meanings from context clues, finding the purpose behind certain sentence structures, examining details to see what they suggest, or seeing the relationships between certain characters. Students have to learn many more of these reading skills, especially when they start reading classics and various pieces of nonfiction. Learning them will not be fun or easy at first, but it will enable the reader to have much more fun reading once he has mastered them. The reader will then feel like an artist using colors, paints, and perspective to make something beautiful and unique instead of miserably drawing ugly stick figures; he will feel like a musician who can finally make beautiful music that he and other people like instead of making his audience cringe in disgust and ultimately embarrassing himself.

Eventually, all mature readers will be able to understand and work with all the different genres in literature. Most texts do have the same basic skills in comprehension, yet each genre emphasizes a specific set of skills for analysis. Both fiction and nonfiction have different genres within them that determine how a reader approaches the text. For example, a reader will look for the thesis, the outline of the argument, and the types of evidence used if he reads a persuasive speech; whereas he will look for plot, characterization, and stylistic elements if he reads a novel. A reader will certainly have a preference for one genre over others like an artist who prefers painting landscapes in an impressionist style over painting human figures in realistic style, yet having experience with all genres will still assist him in better understanding his owned preferred genre of reading and enable him to evolve intellectually. Moreover, many skills in reading will overlap genres; for instance, techniques used to interpret a poem also help in finding the argument in a persuasive essay.

At a very basic level, reaching a point of mastery in reading requires a good deal of instruction and constant practice. After a period of time, the lazy but talented reader will quickly come to nothing because reading demands work like any other artistic discipline. A violinist cannot play a fancy concerto without practicing for many hours, nor can he teach himself to play a concerto. Similarly, a reader cannot read a tragedy of Shakespeare without having read anything before, nor can he teach himself to read Shakespeare without the assistance of some kind of teacher. The brain functions like a muscle and thrives with rigorous discipline. It becomes stronger and has more endurance with regular use, but it becomes slow and weak upon neglect. Due to their lack of practice, many readers have a very hard time concentrating or understanding more difficult works of literature despite having attended ten years of English classes.

In essence, like all other arts, reading is primarily a process of creation. The painter creates paintings; the sculptor creates statues; the musician creates pleasant sounds; the poet creates poems. The reader creates ideas. Unlike watching television or playing a video game where the idea is already constructed and rendered on the screen, reading words on a page requires a person construct an idea, often with many more parts and intricacies, in his own mind. For this reason, watching a movie adaptation of a novel does not equal reading the novel; the mind does not actively construct anything but passively watches a screen, and the movie itself can only show a fraction of the ideas contained in the book.
On a practical level, reading triumphs over other arts because mastering the art of reading allows a person to learn anything. For this reason, schools heavily emphasize strong reading skills for all grade levels since it applies to every subject and is absolutely necessary for college studies and employment training. The art of reading also allows a certain freedom to the master, for what he reads provides new ideas that he can choose to use or not; the poor reader has fewer ideas to choose from and often lets others think for him while the strong reader can think for himself and be his own leader. When one cannot read and learn different things on his own, he sacrifices many things he can enjoy in life such as what he does for a living or understanding why life works the way it does. Therefore, all people must not simply learn the act of reading but master the art of reading and truly broaden the horizons of their existence.

Nipping the Problem in the Bud

2009-04-10T09:03:00.001-07:00

A popular bromide has developed in education; it declares “raising one’s expectations for students will result in better performance.” However, a little experience in teaching will immediately trample this sanguine attitude because students will often fail before meeting those high expectations. They will rebel outwardly forcing substantial disciplinary action, they will rebel inwardly and not try the assignments and put in little effort, or they will try but fail in the objective all the same because they are years behind. Obviously, expectations eventually adjust with the level of the students, but the frustration of knowing they should be higher hits every concerned teacher. Naturally, the guilty culprits arise: parents, teachers, genetics, poverty, technology, media, NCLB, and society at large. Although all these factors deserve more far more serious attention than they receive already, they only address symptoms that manifest themselves later in life, usually adolescence. The real source of a child’s academic success, which can warrant any teacher’s ambitions of raising expectation, originates in his first years of schooling.

One of education’s gurus, Marva Collins, offers some great insight on this subject, which is actually rare among the millions of books on education. In her book, The Marva Collins Method, she describes her unusual approach to elementary school children: to actually teach and make them work. Most people ignore this aspect of the book, choosing rather to focus on the treacly stories of Marva connecting with neglected ghetto-children. For the few paying attention, they will see that Marva’s method is unusual because most elementary schools completely forego the critical instruction a child desperately needs. Most kids in elementary school hardly write, read, and many get by without learning a single rule of grammar. Rather, they play. For about six to eight years, the children grow into young adults neglect to use those absorbent brains that God gave them to learn. They enter high school, equipped with approximately the same skills they had when they entered the third grade. The only difference is that they are bigger, louder, and can procreate.

Fortunately for her little ones, Marva knew that she needed to teach phonics, grammar, and a good amount of classics. The average high school student struggles with all three. In basic, they will stumble on most words and forget to pause on periods revealing a terrifyingly shaky foundation in their literacy. Many of their minds will shut down within minutes of beginning of a classic novel, and they will put their heads down or stare at the ceiling—hence many teachers resort to using the tapes, so the students can enjoy “story time” like they did in kindergarten. In any assessment over grammar, even the most basic of grammar concepts, English teachers will usually need to prepare for the fact that over half of them will fail no matter how good the instruction.

Grammar in particular becomes prickly to teach because it is a discipline that requires some degree of memorization and a great deal of practice, very much like math. Unlike math, elementary teachers will take their chances and shove the burden of teaching grammar to the high schools. They can do this because most standardized tests will hardly test on grammar concepts before the second year of high school. Hence, many students enter come into through the door of English I, writing very much like small children. They make short sentences devoid of modifiers, phrases, additional clauses, and punctuation that strays from the period. Remedying this daunting gap in education requires Herculean efforts from a high school teacher because the students will fight it every step of the way. For the preservation of their sanity, many teachers forego any significant grammar instruction by this point, and pray that the rules will somehow come to students by them subconsciously internalizing some grammatical patterns through a book they read. Unfortunately, even if this were the case (and it isn’t), the students would actually have to read a decent amount of literature in the first place.

Most kids do not read very well, if at all. If they do, they read fairly easy texts written by Rowling or Meyers and their imitators. To say that these popular novels acclimate students to the many rules and conventions of reading classics would be like saying that a short walk through a parking lot acclimates a person to the rigors of a marathon runner. These books contain short sentences, limited vocabulary, easy morality, and a serve lack of complexity in the setting or characters. They serve ideally for escapes, but they do not challenge a reader to learn more than they know. Most elementary schools will eschew serious reading and the discipline it requires in favor of this kind of reading, or no reading at all. What this produces are children in high school that struggle with basic comprehension of adult texts and ideas; they struggle with very simple vocabulary; even discerning the moral message of a tiny fable by Aesop gives them fits.

The basic building block of reading, phonics, comes into question as districts entrust the high school teacher to acquaint callow unprepared youth to the works of Shakespeare. The naïve teachers will try to make the most of the Playwright’s plays by having the students play the parts and read out loud. They will learn most of the students only have a set list of words they can actually sound out and read, but they will ultimately fail with the unfamiliar words that abound in Shakespeare’s plays. The experience is thus tedious and painful for many in this exercise and betrays yet another gap in the students’ instruction. A teacher may teach many lessons half-heartedly without much of a repercussion, but they cannot do this with phonics. When they come short in that regard, they can cripple a child’s mind for a long while in the same way breaking their leg would make them lame permanently.

However, the teachers of an elementary school and their respective curriculum cannot take all the blame for such a paucity of knowledge. Most parents will gladly reinforce a lack of skills for their children. They nurture vices of attention deficiency with plenty of toys and few demands. Kids will be kids—forever. They stay lazy, distracted, and demanding throughout their academic careers. An elementary school will struggle with this, but a high school teacher will have no choice but succumb to it since the damage has become irreversible. Thus, the high school’s library is full of movie adaptations of classics, and the cabinets in most classrooms are filled construction paper and markers.

Marva Collins’s story demonstrates the difficult but ultimately necessary practice of really teaching the basics and disciplining the children at an early age. In her professional life, this eventually led to ostracism by her colleagues, so she had to start her own school. She succeeded with that school and now holds seminars. The district that pushed her out is notorious for violence, inefficiency, and poor academic performance. For the lucky few that have learned a few things in English, perhaps they can draw the moral lesson from her story and apply it their own younger students if they hope to change things for the better. High school English teachers and their students with underdeveloped intellects have suffered enough.

News of the Day: No one cares

2008-12-13T16:46:00.001-08:00

The Chicago Tribune shall be going bankrupt soon, leaving the famous city without a paper. Apparently, the paper was not making any business despite trying to appeal to average simpleton. They enlarged pictures, reduced text, tapped into appealing narratives of a certain politician from the area; but alas, they did not increase their readership and merely insulted the intelligence of their subscribers. Pundits have wrung their hands trying to find the guilty culprit, and they finally found their perfect scapegoat: everyone.

Since the arrival of the internet, everyone in the world has stopped caring about the journals. They have instead developed the habit of retreating to their boxes at home. Those that bother to read the news, usually the older crowd still stuck in the habit of checking on the world from time to time, read their selected articles online. Ironically, this selectivity normally leads to least relevant news receiving the most exposure while very important news passes by without a sound.

Naturally, most people have stopped reading the headlines altogether unless it affects them directly. Always keeping a finger on the pulse of the cultural bloodstream, a certain periodical released its yearly list of important personages a few years ago with a twist. In years past, the lists have included world leaders, famous scientists, important artists, and others that left an imprint in the world consciousness. This year, the magazine featured a computer with a reflective surface on the cover. The perplexed reader who looked at the magazine would see the idea emerge in the reflection. Yes, that year, the important person of the year was Everyone.

Unfortunately, the magazine made an accurate choice that could validly apply every year after that issue. Everyone is special, though not in a way that makes neighbors eager to know one another. Everyone now wants to know themselves better and forget about their neighbors. Unknowingly quoting the words of Whitman, the world of the today wakes up with the verse, "I celebrate Myself!" More people everyday now center on themselves. They devote web pages, filled with odes and hymns, to themselves. They make videos of themselves. They watch shows that feature people like themselves. They buy themselves every imaginable product specifically tailored to their increasingly vapid personalities. As they delve further into shameless vanity (shame has evaporated along with those that read the news), their ears stop hearing and their eyes stop seeing.

They illustrate the modern paradox: as the world becomes more connected the souls of the world become more disconnected. Information of all forms is unimaginably accessible, but no one wants to learn. Caught in so many webs of networks, communities, and thousands of different communication devices, people feel more isolated and detached from the world than ever. People desperately want to know themselves, but they employ every diversion they can to avoid it. Human nature completes another lap around the cycle of history and comes back to the words of an ancient mind, "Vanities of vanities. All life is vanity."

Contrary to modern dogma, the problems of today (always material, only superficially moral) will not be solved if people looked at themselves in the mirror. People need to stop looking at the mirror and look at the world around them like people have before they felt like celebrating themselves. Perhaps this approach could breathe some life into the cultural dialog that has suffered from a boorish insularity. The sycophantic pundits that pandered to this mentality are now finding out that they were simply digging their own graves.

From Goosebumps to The Great Gatsby

2008-11-08T14:39:00.001-08:00

As the leaves fall, the cold fronts push in, and the students become accustomed to the routine of the school day, the English teachers will finally teach their major texts for the year. Typically, their students have attention spans as fragile as eggshells, and their reading skills are hardly more sophisticated than the toddler sounding out nursery rhymes. The mere sight of books for most of these students will induce the most offensive yawns. The task is grim but quite clear for the English teacher: The kids need to be shaken out of their intellectual stupor and the fire of their passive imaginations needs rekindling. All they need is good story that an adolescent can wrap his brain around.

Unfortunately, the teacher has his hands tied on this one. The district has mandated that certain texts be taught without question. Thus, to the struggling reader(which applies to nearly 90% of American students) that has just entered high school, the English teacher will pass out copies of Homer's The Odyssey. As soon as the students try to wade through the prayer to the muses filled with Homeric similes and lofty allusions to countless myths, their little flames of imagination will now be successfully snuffed out in an instant. The book is difficult and easily overwhelms them. The English teacher must now anticipate their wrath and cope with it the rest of the year.

That is only the beginning. As these little ones sit through class after class, they will still have to endure the verbiage of Shakespeare, Greek Tragedies, and a host of stories better suited for octogenarians than kids with absolutely no concept of history or any matter of maturity. To name a few, they are: The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, Lord of the Flies, The Crucible, and Great Expectations. All of these are lovely books for a seasoned reader and thinker, but for the kid pitifully sounding out three syllables, these books will successfully kill any desire to read. They will eventually kill an English teacher's desire to teach as well.

Despite having the same gloomy results, English departments across the country continue to unsuccessfully use these books as instructional tools for decades. To be fair, teachers did have a few novels to really move the students and make them think twice about opening a book. Any novel of Steinbeck could always convey a digestible moral lesson that suited the pallets of young readers. Catcher in the Rye had a mysterious magic over students of any background. Even George Orwell or Ray Bradbury had a peculiar appeal to students sitting in windowless classrooms pondering such odd concepts as freedom or individuality.

However, these books have either been shelved, pushed up grade levels, or banned altogether. In a triumph of insanity, the same schools that teach the perverted plight of Oedipus and the unnecessarily sanguine quests of Odysseus will somehow find the few naughty words of Holden Caulfield and the subtle innuendos of Steinbeck objectionable beyond all measure. Thus, any book that the kids could call their own have been taken away, and they are left with the driest old tomes that even most teachers would pass over if they could.

Naturally, some teachers, mostly those in the urban districts, have tried fixing this problem altogether by compromising the mandated literature with more contemporary selections that nearly always have some multicultural agenda. What usually occurs is that their books ironically have the same difficulties since they mistakenly pick books with the same adult themes. Even if a story of Sandra Cisnerors is short, gritty, and Latino, it's hardly appreciated by the majority of young people. The same applies to the confessional texts of Gary Soto, Amy Tan, and Maya Angelou.

Due to this recurring result, educators might do well to consider giving books that are not specifically for adults for a change. Set the kids on an adventure, exploring new worlds in the future, in the past, or in the jungles. Quite a few luminaries (Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Daniel Defoe, or Robert Louis Stevenson, to name a few) have written classics in these areas that will enhance the vocabulary and language of students yet still entertain. Besides, before even catching a whiff of Shakespeare or Homer, any reader should have an extensive body of texts and histories in them first. Students could get through many enjoyable books before taking on the giants of the language.

Nevertheless, educators are under the impression that there would not be enough time, so they try to take the "short cut." They think they can merely create some little "strategy" in teaching that will solve the problem of reading incredibly hard texts. Somehow the students will catch all the lovely metaphors, similes, and puns of Shakespeare without having to work too hard at it; the teachers just need to present it the right way. Devise some happy little group assignments accompanied by Power points for the Scarlet Letter, and the kids will surely catch the multitude of symbols and themes. This has never worked, but districts never seem to stop trying to make it work. Couple this flawed approach with a resistance to spend even the tiniest amount for purchasing new set of books and teachers are stuck with the same classics that have unfairly become infamous among the non-reading public.

Fortunately, most schools will leave a few sets of fun-yet-nutritious books lingering in the corners of a dusty cluttered storage room, and the good English teachers will capitalize on these finds. When given the chance, their students will demonstrate skills that were thought to be hopelessly nonexistent all because they had a book they could finally understand and enjoy. If this could be maintained, decent levels of literacy in America could be revived, but that teacher will soon have to stab his dear little students in the back by following district requirements, giving them Julius Caesar.

Epistles of an Educator

2008-08-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Excerpts from two letters of one teacher writing to another. Something tells me that my sob story was pretty typical.

"...the summer has finally come to a close. I've had the pleasure of seeing what teachers do before the school year starts (as that lovable urban district decided to wait minutes before the year to hire me). Like a rock on the beach eroding from wave after wave of salty water pounding it, I sustain these blows of boredom from meeting after meeting. First, it was teaching higher thinking skills from a lady who barely had the capacity to utilize those skills herself. Then, it was AP training for a week from a new age troll-like woman who gave us her lesson plan leftovers from her 20 years of teaching and a whole bunch of treacly anecdotes with her exceptional kiddos. Finally, this week had a whole barrage of orientations and meetings explaining everything except the very basic. I know how to look up a student's 4th grade TAKS score, but I'm unsure about how to make copies. I'm well versed on the plethora of levels from Bloom's magic hat of "higher thinking," but I'm unclear about the school schedule and my class rosters. How much time could be saved by doing away with meetings altogether and letting us just talk with one another. These instructors get upset about us talking while they click away at their pointless (pun intended) power point presentations, but we're just trying to get the information we need to literally do our jobs before the kids come....

"I got to get a glance at some of my students' scores. They blew me away. All A's and Bs. I think they were even better than the advanced kids at our old school. I thought to myself, "So this is where the normal kids go." Of course, I'm probably overstating things, but I'm going to try and have fun, making these little ones work themselves into a delirium of words and ideas. Apparently, we're even encouraged to be strict with the kids. Can you believe it?! Principals want to extract undesirable elements from the start. The school has developed a reputation of being strict, so the kids coming in watch themselves and keep their stupid phones at home and their rear ends covered. I'm really curious to see all this for myself. Right now, it's all hearsay. Just let me at them. I'll keep my enthusiasm tempered however. I resolved to be much more organized and systematic about everything this year, and more vigilant than ever about lackluster performance. Excessive optimism tends to impede this..."

"As last week ticked away at these insipid meetings, I felt that weight of upcoming obligations growing heavier and heavier. I don't know if these people that coordinate these meetings understand that teachers, especially ones doing a new subject need extra time to prepare something. I have to create new assignments. I have to read over stories to give my students. I have to have all this typed and copied before the kids come. And I do this all over again for my English 2 class. This takes time! I needed that whole week to get a good solid start. They gave a few hours Friday afternoon. That was it! And then factor in the needless delay to have them copied by some goon at their copy center that oversees and protects the vestal virgin copiers from us teachers, and I'm about to have a heart attack the first morning of school because I'm cutting it so damn close for a mere one day of classwork. I had to plead with the woman there to copy mine ahead of the others with pitiful humility. Just one instance among many where the uneducated drone gets the best of us teachers.

Of course, while worrying about my worksheets and syllabi and dreading the next day when this circus would start up once more, I get this list of complex procedures with attendance. I did the best I could counting those who were there and marking those who were absent. Apparently, this wasn't enough. I needed to have this turned in before noon and accompany the sheets with more forms stating the kids' ID numbers and other information that I thought was registered with our computers. With more than a little abruptness and resentment, the woman there chewed me out for neglecting to read my directions carefully and turning my papers in an hour later than I should have. And again, the uneducated drone got the best of this teacher.

I had to spend a whole hour after school clearing my desk and putting everything in right order. All the garbage teachers dump on me that they think I can use, all the papers about upcoming school events, all the papers about beginning of school procedures, papers about technology and textbook guidelines, and finally, all the kids' work that I planned to grade but finally decided to put in a folder for ungraded "sample work." After that, I checked my e-mails packed with attachments that I "needed" to read. Soon the sun was going down, my feet were killing me, and I needed a break. I didn't take one all day. I had my pathetic little lunch of a smashed peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a cookie while toiling away on the computer. It was a pitiful scene to behold.

Don't even get me started on lesson plans. They've adopted that devious format that requires me to copy and paste from one screen to the other and discuss at length every assignment of every day and how well it engages my students. I pleaded ignorance over the program (along with some other teachers) and hopefully bought a little time and lenience. Though I now need to attend another meeting this Thursday.

I'm ashamed to say that I feel overwhelmed, and it's not even the kids. They actually seem like a pretty wholesome bunch. They tried at the work, laughed at my jokes, and refrained from sleeping through my stretched out presentation of the syllabus (a lack of time and resources forced me into eating up time this way). It's just these things that are supposed to "help" us teachers that bind our limbs and brains.

I should be good for tomorrow, and I'll try to catch up and finish up the week's assignments somehow. Pray for me in that regard..."

The Theraphist and The Technician

2008-08-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

In the education world, many buzzwords and phrases come up to signify efforts to improve classroom education. These words will season every lengthy educational psychology study or new proposal for failing school districts to help focus teachers on helping their students on their way up the winding road of knowledge and achievement. Even those without a teaching certificate might be able to recognize these words that often fill the empty insights of newspaper and magazine articles concerning education. Here are a few: academic rigor, learning through effort, higher level thinking, engaging students, cooperative learning, connecting with technology, and the list goes on. Unfortunately, the one word people don't use is discipline, not even for behavior (this would expect too much for some students). Discipline entails three qualities: self-control, a respect for rules and guidelines, and a training in either moral or academic development, often both. Instead of the empty phrases previously listed, all padded with endless packets that contain absolutely nothing, many schools and districts could save a forest of trees by outlining their strategies to improve education with this simple but powerful idea which founded the idea of formal education to being with.

The consequences of doing otherwise leads to a pedagogical ambiguity that jeopardizes core curriculum. Many teachers end up having disturbingly different ideas of what they teach, especially English. Commanding language through reading and writing, the most vital discipline in a student's education, has formally ceased to exist for most students. English has now become the fun class that many of the students aptly identify as the art of excreting bull excrement. This phenomenon has arisen from a large amount of English teachers shamelessly deciding to teach whatever they feel like, usually opting for something easy and fun while leaving a precious few English teachers to bear the cross of teaching the arduous discipline of language mastery. The former shall be known as the therapists, and the latter shall be known the technicians.

Currently, the therapists predominate in schools. As their title suggests, they have made their classroom a platform for individual expression, preaching tolerance, raising self-esteem, and discussing life lessons. They pat themselves on the back for teaching their kids how to "think" and "make the right choices" when in fact they do neither. They promote immaturity by empathizing with it. They ease their students into a lifelong illiteracy and mental laziness by treating the activity of reading as an innate ability rather than a series of complex mental skills. Most of them will feel completely comfortable reading to the kids like a mother to her little toddlers. They jettison formal rules of composition and essay writing and instead teach the kids to make personal diaries and various pieces of doggerel in its place. Without question, the grammar books will be shelved far away in a dark closet before seeing any use, thus condemning the students to single clauses and a whole world of vocabulary they will never know how to use. In a bitter display of irony, these therapists have created the very problems in students they sought to extinguish. The students cannot express themselves since they lack basic linguistic skills. Their understanding of tolerance evaporates as they lose the capacity to reason and distinguish particular sides of an argument outside their own. They lose self-esteem when their abundant intellectual inadequacies inevitably show themselves. In the end, they do not learn any true life lessons since they have been coddled and passed on into a world with quixotic notions of their worth. Only after a few years out of school (if not earlier), they will feel reality's crippling blow leave them crumpled in mediocrity.

Fortunately, before a few of those students graduate, they might encounter a real English teacher known as the technician. Students often hate the technician because this teacher will force them to work and use their brains. Little do they know that these teachers work even harder than they do. They will grade and correct every pitiful paper they write. They will take the time to teach the abstract and complex world of grammar and ram the stolid boundaries of the students' prepubescent sentence structures. They will create and teach the complex blueprints involved in building an argument and adorning it with polished language.They will burn off the abundant flab slowing a student's brain with unceasing dissections, deep readings, and critiques on difficult but doable texts. Students under the technician will finally learn the meaning of the word discipline: self control, correct training, and an obedience to essential academic and moral rules. They will be armed to pass any examination or complex task or concept forever afterwards. Sadly, they will often resent this devoted teacher that endowed them with these life long skills and remember fondly the teacher that gave them parties and field trips.

Too many people have entered the teaching profession hoping to affect young people's hearts instead of their minds. They come inspired with their favorite poetry (sometimes their own), implausible movies showing teachers exhorting their unnaturally compliant students to "seize the day," or naive notions of simply motivating kids out of their kids out of apathy with hard-hitting discussions and therapy sessions. If they don't quit within their first few years, these teachers will take their place below a smiling indifferent principal in pushing the illiterate young American on his way. They will loudly cry foul at standardized tests until the standards sink low enough to accommodate their lackadaisical teaching methods.

Teachers need to concern themselves with the process rather than the result. It's arduous, slow, intimidating in its complexity, but unavoidably necessary. The proper word for this learning process that has gradually faded away from modern education is discipline. Until educators stop needlessly inventing those empty different definitions and buzzwords, that desirable result of discipline will be gone as soon as the bell for class rings.

The simple things in life...

2008-07-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

The Tyranny of Technology

2008-06-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

End of the Year...

2008-06-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

The Ghetto School

2008-05-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

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

2008-05-06T20:19:00.000-07:00

The Mission

2008-04-17T20:25:00.000-07:00

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...

2008-04-16T17:30:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

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.

A rose by any other name might forget to smell as sweet.

2008-03-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

“He’s smart but he’s just lazy.” Parents say this to their children. Children say it to themselves and their friends. Even teachers have to say it to irresponsible parents to abnegate any guilt on way they raise their young ones. Actually, in many conscientious districts, many teachers have to substitute the word “lazy” for something less accusatory like “unmotivated” or “unengaged.” While this little phrase happily obviates accountability from all parties, it has wreaked havoc on the developing minds of way too many students. Many sassy little urchins neglecting to read, write, or think early in life will fail miserably when they grow into adulthood. They read at lower grade levels, their maturity is greatly delayed, and they defy reality by claiming intelligence. It’s time to let these students and their parents learn the horrible but liberating truth: They’re stupid, and it’s their own damn fault; it’s up to them to change that. Otherwise a teacher will just be wasting a criminal amount of time for nothing.

This is literarily utter blasphemy for any teacher to even think, but it’s sadly true for a growing amount of students. Try as educators or parents might, their explanations for the struggling students are false. All students being intelligent in their own way is a myth. On the other side of the argument, people should recognize that intelligence being solely dependent on a favorable genetic code is also myth. Common sense can easily thwart the former myth. If one student can successfully read Moby Dick and analyze its plethora of symbols, allegories, and allusions while the other can only read Dr. Seuss and achieve comprehension through the charming illustrations; then there is a tremendous disparity between in their verbal intelligence regardless of how they approach texts. One knows more while the other knows less; this is undisputable. The latter argument parallels a similar argument that genetics determines obesity. There is truth that genes can increase the propensity of acquiring intelligence or weight, but practice and discipline play a far greater role in how a mind or body develops. Perhaps coincidentally, scientist work as ardently on a cure for obesity as they do for mental acuity.

Acquired intelligence does not mysteriously descend on some students; rather, it’s earned. Intelligent people acquire knowledge and skills through solving problems, practicing logic, reading a variety of challenging texts, and composing ideas. Stupid people disband the possibility of acquiring knowledge by turning their brains off at every opportunity. They do not read; they ask others to solve their problems for them; they fidget and daydream at the first mental challenge; they have a very difficult time following directions; they lack any sort of curiosity; they seize every conceivable distraction that will delay the anguish of the boredom to which they’ve irrationally submitted. In concise terms, laziness creates stupidity and exists in conjunction with stupidity. The moment the brain stops working, it starts to degenerate. The moment some youth decides to give up books of a certain grade level, he stays at that reading level until he changes his mind about his reading –unless the grade levels adjust to suit his inferiority.

People must understand that learning process does not skip any steps, but it’s a gradual climb. A student that neglects his children’s books, then young adult books, then some provocative classics, will not be able to read and enjoy Shakespeare. He will simply whine, fidget, and eventually fail –assuming the teacher holds steady on grading standards and doesn’t cave in to the student’s desire for the easy art project. The same thing applies to a student given complex algebra when he still clings to the calculator to do simple arithmetic. All academic disciplines come in steps. People often forget those illustrated children’s classics or those little math games that made a picture, but these types of activities set the foundation for the books or professions that made their life. A stupid person lacks that kind of development and pursues every mental escape from breaking pencils to boozing later on in life.

The debilitating effects of a mentally lazy life will always trouble the person suffering from it. However, just like this person escaped working their minds, they escape taking blame for their inadequacy. Psychologist make their money by whipping up new theories for incompetence like a new strain of ADD, a various learning disorder, a new mental disability, or any various emotional disorder. Most people, smart or stupid, can claim some kind of special education hindering label -and its accompanying “medication”- by the time the graduate. Only a small minority truly qualify for such categorizations. The vast majority of them suffer from nothing except their laziness and its resulting ineptitude. Some even take pride in it, saying how lazy they are but how they cleverly they get away with not being clever.

Teachers have taken on the most abuse for the misunderstanding of stupidity. Most of them can spot the problem quickly, but they have no right to call it a problem or to attempt to solve it. Obviously, solving a problem without acknowledging is simply illogical and thus impossible anyway. Therefore, many teachers avoid the problem altogether by lowering the standard for intelligence thus nullifying stupidity. The stupid kids keep their self-esteem and the teachers are spared from the impossible task of bringing an unwilling kid up to grade-level material. Even the standards for certain grade-levels will decline for the purpose of assuaging spoiled kids that hate thinking. A quick glance at a English textbook in the mid-twentieth century and a glance at one now will instantly show the frightening decline in literacy.

For many people, the epiphany that illuminates an ignoramus of his own ignorance will be the spark of curiosity and lead to a respectable livelihood. For others, they will have parents devoted enough to take away their televisions and leave them no choice but to educate themselves. Unfortunately, the rest often fidget and vegetate their way through life and eventually find themselves wondering at their poverty and ongoing depression. That is the fate of the “lazy but smart” kid. Many of them had a warning from their old-fashioned teachers about this reality, but they heard from their peers, the media, and their parents that they were always smart enough but only a little lazy.

Consciously ignoring stupidity inhibits the work of educators while simultaneously disenfranchising the students who unknowingly suffer from it. Only stupidity results from the vice of mental laziness. These two qualities should never be permissible in a school or home for obvious reasons. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but stupidity by any other name might stink up a child’s opportunity for enlightenment.

Tracking (Part 3: Allegory of the Thirsty Horse)

2008-03-06T17:43:00.000-08:00

As far back as Ancient Greece, the poet Hesiod rightly acknowledged the natural hierarchy of civilized societies with three divisions: those who think for themselves (a small portion), those who think as others think (a big portion), and those who don’t think at all (a small portion that seems big). This hierarchy has carried over through the millennia with every society, thinkers teaching and guiding the doers to solve problems while the non thinkers create more problems. As history progresses, the thinkers have established schools to eliminate non-thinkers somehow. Today, American schools try to do this by forcing all students to learn the minimum in the same way whether the students comply or not. Despite the lack of logic in the policy, and the cultural and productive standards diminishing year after year, this is the fair system. This is also an educational system that creates more and more purposeless non-thinkers unable to cope with reality.

Acknowledging this failure of a principle that neglects those who think for themselves and nurtures more non-thinkers, a new policy must arise to spare young Americans from a damning ignorance that they don’t want. This policy must promote independent thinking among the elite (those that strive for excellence), an adherence to good thinking for the rest, and a merciless contempt for ignorance and incompetence that plague a vulnerable few. On this principle of satisfying all three groups, schools must create a relevant institution that will serve the needs of thirsty young minds eager for the power to affect their own destinies. As it stands, too many schools are utterly irrelevant, and they inadvertently lock formerly energetic human beings into vegetating derelicts.

The following allegory illustrates the solution to schools’ responsibility to nurture young minds, and how they have handled them instead. “You can guide a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Instead of heeding this advice, schools have perpetually tried to come up with new ways to make their horses drink. They have tried punishments, coaxing, and a myriad of mind games with the students, but to no avail. The horses resent being forced to drink water and ask for Coca-Cola instead. Finally, the schools give up and comply. They replace the life-giving water with dehydrating Coca-Cola and await praise for at least leading these horses somewhere instead letting the owners have to worry about it. While the owners would prefer their horses drinking water instead of Coca-Cola, they have no solutions of their own. These owners have no water of their own, and the horses don’t seem to like it even though they need it so badly.

One just needs to remember the quote of these recalcitrant drinkers and stop trying to force these horses to drink. Simply forget the Coca-Cola and let the horses drink the water on their own. They will appreciate the water more because it substantially slaked their thirst instead of the cheap sugary thrill that left them even thirstier. The conflict does not stop there though. Coca-Cola has much more power and influence with famous computer generated polar bears gracing their commercials as opposed to water, so the horses will still vehemently demand the soft drink even after they enjoy the refreshing glass of water. The owner knows that a lifetime of drinking soda will rot the young one’s teeth, make one fat, plague one’s brain with headaches, and leave one sluggish and dehydrated. The horse does not know this, but he does know that he is thirsty and that he will get his Coca-Cola if he holds out on water long enough. The adult will vacillate in his reasoning, “Well, I know he really needs water, but he doesn’t like it. I remember that we never gave Coca-Cola to these horses before. But things are different these days. Younger horses have computers and internet… maybe they need soft drinks to quench their thirst. After all, that’s what everyone else gives them. And he is much happier when I give him coke…. And though I hate to admit it, it IS a lot easier.” And the unknowing horse of so few years has now determined how he will live his life; first, with the consent of his owner; then with time, the sanctimonious approval of the owner. The horse will eventually get tired of Coca-Cola and desire something more nourishing, but it won’t be there. The adult will just force more coke down his throat until the horse forgets the idea of drinking anything altogether, and lives an unhappy and unhealthy life forever after.

Now, replace horse with student, water with relevant nourishing education, Coca-Cola with idiotic busywork (otherwise known as the “Crayola Curriculum”), drinking with thinking, and the owner with school. Schools give busywork to all kids equally, allowing students to not think. By the time their minds beg to be used, the schools reply with more pointless busywork. Even if their souls cry out to be useful and virtuous, schools will tell them to wait for college and leave them to listen to the rappers sponsored by Coca-Cola in the meantime. By the time they receive their piece of paper, they have already lost their dreams, their capacity to achieve those dreams -had they existed-, and they desire the life that will keep them from thinking and achieving, two things they have associated with their low self-esteem.

These poor students needs purpose, and school should have provided that purpose. Educators could have done this by removing all sources of time wasting in the young person’s distraction-filled life. They could have shown and provided all the paths to a productive life. They could have thwarted the destructive messages that inculcate young minds today. They could have let the horse find its own place to drink from the long waterway instead of leaving only one place in the river or providing a harmful soft drink. Although illiterates and pleasure-seeking drones graduate in higher and higher proportions every year, this trend can be reversed with a different approach to education. Schools should just allow the students to choose what they will learn and track them according to their abilities.

As it stands, all kids follow the same educational requirements, sit in the same classrooms, and learn at the same pace. The majority either hate what they learn or they hate how they are taught, and they eventually develop a dislike for any kind of learning whatsoever. They need to have a choice in what they learn and how they learn, so they will not learn to hate and blame school.

Of necessity, the choices provided to the student must actually serve a productive purpose in society. Normally, the students could choose between high academic disciplines or vocational disciplines. With the exception of a few necessities for every functioning citizen like literacy, basic math, and basic civics; the student will pursue the required studies of his chosen discipline. Each discipline should allow two tracks: one for the exceptional students who strive for excellence, and another for students who desire competence. As for the students who prove to desire neither excellence nor competence, they will remain isolated from the rest of school where the issues that cause such a aberration can be fully addressed and corrected without stopping the other students from learning. The number of students needing drastic intervention would decrease significantly if elementary schools employed these measures instead letting the problematic study habits fester until high school.

Moreover, when a school gives a student a choice, it also gives that student a goal to pursue. This goal can be an actual set of skills that can help the student and distinguish him from an ignorant child he once was. On the other hand, college is not a goal. Like school, college serves as a means to a goal in life rather than function as a goal in itself. When students have a real goal like obtaining skills for a profitable or fruitful enterprise, they will actively seek edification and develop the discipline necessary for it instead of escape it.

Those that object to tracking and individualizing education as a means to establishing elitism and unfair segregation should look at the rampant apathy that hits American children as soon as they leave elementary school. They find out that they are tiny anonymous ants in a huge mess of a school working with a floating standard of quality. The school has set their unsure path, and the students will have nothing to do with it except how well they comply. They will drift each year through classes and it’s up to their backgrounds in how they respond. However, they know their response, good or bad, will receive the same treatment, so they really don’t exert much of themselves. For their whole academic career, they have no goals except some ambiguous sequel to high school known as college, which many of them could care less about since it offers them little more than what they already have learned to resent in high school. Most of them end up where most people without goals end up, in a life of unceasing mediocrity.

It’s time to give them a choice and stop relegating American students to this vicious cycle. The world’s best educational systems like Finland, Taiwan, and South Korea have recognized the necessity to track student and diversify the curriculum to suit their needs. Maybe it’s time to learn from them, so American students can start learning themselves.

Tracking in School (Part Two: The Shortcomings of Inclusion)

2008-01-27T18:03:00.000-08:00

In efforts to level the playing field and ensure everyone the right to an education, many public schools have practiced the philosophy of inclusion. Inclusions means having the sluggish kids, even those with mental handicaps and severe emotional disorders, sitting and working in the same classroom as the best and brightest of the school. This practice naturally inflicts a blow to the idea of tracking, which separates students into different levels according to their ability. Those who advocate inclusion reason that those sluggish students will benefit from a mainstream education that provides proximity to normal kids. They reason thus: Like someone getting better at tennis by playing with someone better than themselves, these students will improve their study habits by being with better students. They will also find questionable (though never actually questioned) studies to support their argument. Unfortunately, they forget that the tennis players playing with those worse than them leads them to stagnate in their progress and even make them worse tennis players. Almost all intelligent people who have endured classes with ignorant troglodytes because of a school’s mission to equalize what nature has left unequal will tell you how little they learned and how much time they wasted in that class.

Most public schools have forsaken the remedial and special education track, so they could put these students in regular classrooms. They compensate for the kids' handicaps by providing a co-teacher to assist the teacher in the classroom. In theory, the co-teacher monitors the progress of the sluggish students and assists them when necessary. In practice, most co-teacher hardly show up to work (most of them seem to be coaches) and the teacher has ten extra students in his classroom that slow down the learning process of that classroom considerably. Rather than having the same expectation maintained for the whole class, teachers lower those expectations to cut down the failure rate and accommodate the mediocre students who normally act out when asked to actually learn. After a few years of this, the regular students internalize the academic ineptitude of their “special” peers and they plunge into special education status themselves. Due to this inclusion procedure, the number of special education students grow exponentially and the regular level descends into a greatly remedial level with the title of "regular".

Fortunately, thanks to ratings of U.S. News and the administrators who desperately need a few smart students to redeem their feral student body, public schools will try keeping an honors level geared towards taking AP tests at the end. By necessity, this honors bubble that holds about ten percent of a school body escapes the onslaught of inclusion advocates and allows those teachers (who are envied by every other teacher in the building) to set some actual expectations for their kids and work at their level without endangering themselves to a high failure rate.

Naturally, most schools have tried expanding the honors level with the same ideas of raising the general level of student performance and earning a place in U.S. News by practicing inclusion while still achieving. Unfortunately, the same deterioration of expectations results from this. The Honors teachers have less freedom in how they evaluate their students because the administrators have set a higher quota for more honors students, which must not be violated. Once more, inclusion knocks down a level, making the honors track just regular.

Therefore, for the sake of a few knuckleheads, all the other students have been sacrificed. Parents now fear of their children become dumber by going to school, which happens depressingly often. Most kids in public school who actually tap their intellectual potential will do it on their own. Too many times, school only serves to bring them down by asking them to put down Jane Eyre so they can pick up a glue stick and colored marker.

Charter schools, private schools, and schools in affluent suburbs exist and thrive because of this simple phenomenon. Desperate parents will do anything they can just to keep away from the dullards that now dictate public school curriculum. These are the schools that nurture the leaders of tomorrow and offer a glimmer of hope in the future. They also expose a disturbing disparity between the fortunate and the less fortunate. Those less fortunate, which include many middle class families, have simply accepted public schools functioning as daycares for kids until they reach legal adulthood. Like the teachers, they have also dropped their expectations of what education should be.

Luckily, more and more parents now call for reform, usually in the forms of charters, schools that run outside the guidelines of a district but still receive government funding. These schools allow an outlet for parents who can't afford to live in a rich suburb or pay the tuitions for private schools. The trend of charters will rise due to the choice they offer kids who want to achieve without the heavy weights of kids impatiently waiting until they day they can drop out ruining their classes. Unsurprisingly, public school districts will do all they can to deter their success, so they can remain blameless of neglecting the young minds that overpopulate their ugly campuses.

However, a great majority of children will remain imprisoned in the public schools filled with the detrimental miasma of inclusion. These schools need tracking to restore quality learning back into the building. This would address the needs of the good students, the regular students, and the poor students. Moreover, it would allow teachers to teach the whole class instead the ones that require the most attention, who are coincidentally the worst students. Noting the shortcomings of the present system, tracking for the three levels seems like a much better idea to explore than the irrational notion of forcing all kids into the same physical proximity with the hopes that intelligence will somehow radiate from the good students to the bad ones.

The Crumbling of the Ivory Towers

2008-01-15T18:03:00.000-08:00

All schools now want to push all their students to college. It’s in their mottos, slogans, mission statements, “educational philosophies”, etcetera. All kids must pursue a four-year degree in some abstract study whether they like it or not. This academic priority is based on some brilliant research that shows that people with college educations earn higher salaries than those without college educations. Never mind that these statistics reflect basic pattern of American workers over ten years ago and not an actual guarantee of success. The schools remain convinced that this ensures a higher quality education, better numbers on tests and graduate rates, and step towards progress.

Unfortunately, the opposite seems to occur. Education, especially the seemingly untouchable ivory towers of higher education, suffers from these campaigns for a college education. The standards fall, the numbers for tests go down, and dropouts continue. It also doesn’t help that most school leaders can only feel obliged to preach and set deadlines but have absolutely no clue how to achieve it. Their method usually involves maintaining the same atrocious learning environment for the students while yelling at teachers more often and assigning them more useless staff development sessions. Obviously, when this does not work out, most people recognize this ongoing drama for what it is: Another way of hiding the gross inadequacies of public schools today.

However, this drama of making every student a scholar has successfully wreaked havoc on educational standards. Colleges must now sustain the vast onslaught of unprepared slackers ready to get their priceless piece of paper known as a college degree. To do this, many colleges have created developmental classes (in other words, a mini-high school sponsored by the exorbitant tuition of worthier students) or they have sacrificed their standards altogether. This sacrifice has led to a disturbing trend among universities who now forsake the fine-tuning of academic aptitude for “practical career know-how” in order to save face about plummeting standards. In particular, literature courses have opted for shorter multi-cultural books and contemporary short stories rather than tomes of the respected Western canon. While these books might exhibit openness to diversity, many of them are easy reads, and even the most sanctimonious professors acknowledge that. In the other disciplines power point presentations replace writing compositions, Wikipedia replaces actual sources for research, and derisive jibes (often spouted from asinine professors) replace competent discussion.

The academic standards of high schools have also suffered. In the spirit of making every student a college prospect, many schools have streamlined honors courses and loosened the methods of tracking that separate the wheat from the chafe in the student body. They now drag at-risk students (educational term for prospective drop-outs) literally kicking and screaming into an advance placement class where they continue to kick and scream for the whole year. The teachers would normally fail these dunces, but they have so many of these students that failure is not an option anymore. At this point of no return for the teacher, their expectations normally take a beating on their grade book for a few weeks before they inevitably drop to a lower level.

Naturally, schools pushing college have done away with programs intended as alternatives to college. Many have disposed of useful vocational programs that could immediately equip kids with practical skills that the job market always requires. Rather, they are forced into classes that attempt to teach them the beauty of poetry, obscure theorems in advanced algebra, and the cultural celebrations of Mauritania. While a minority might appreciate this well-rounded though not altogether practical curriculum, a majority usually space out and hone their skills as slackers just to get through their days. Kids who might want, or need, to work after high school often come into the workforce handicapped because school has trained them to lazy, dishonest, and irrelevant.

The strangest fact that high schools seem to somehow overlook is that most universities lie outside the price range of most kids, even middle-class ones. Parents and students begrudgingly paying off their loans understand that universities, both public and private, presently charge extortionate tuitions. These costs especially encumber students in states that have deregulated tuitions. Considering the quality of education received in these institutions that cater to profitable endeavors over educational ones, the notion of paying the equivalent of year’s salary of a white-collar worker is downright absurd.

Community college has become the only choice for many young adults seeking some kind of credential that might attract an employer. Unfortunately, they provide financial relief at the cost of accepting all students indiscriminately. Thus, the hopes some smart kids cherished in their bosoms of finally separating from the imbeciles of the class fly away. The state that needs them so badly has left them an additional two years of high school in the guise of a college.

To define success in terms of a college degree limits the definition of success completely. Students come in many different forms with many different mindsets. They all have a talent and a passion, and school must tap that precious resource in each of its students. Universities do not deserve the power that high schools give them, determining a person’s overall success in life. They should humbly serve as supplemental academic training to students desiring it. Other outlets need to exist for the other students ready to work or gain a profitable skill. A high school that respect this and aspire to opening more possibilities ultimately succeeds as a beneficial institution over one that alienates students and tears down academic standards due to their narrow-minded view that college is the only way.

More Staff Development Comics

2007-12-01T18:32:00.000-08:00

There's something cathartic in drawing stick figures. I don't know what I'd do in these staff development meetings without them. It's actually a good way to think certain concepts through, like staff development meetings. I also felt like recreating a few interesting things I got to experience at my job.

Tracking in School (Part One)

2007-12-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

As much as people hate to admit it, humanity comes in three forms: the high class, the middle class, and the lower class. The higher class enjoys the most freedom, the most influence, and the most the world has to offer, but shoulders the most responsibility. The middle class enjoys all these things as well, but to a lesser degree. The lower class does not enjoy these things but are dependent on others. The gospel rightfully acknowledges the three levels of almost all societies when Christ tells his story about the three men and the talents that their master dispenses. The first two do great things with their responsibility over the talents, but the poor man buries his share in the ground and produces nothing while the master is away.

People often argue with this outlook on humanity citing it as a lingering form of backward barbarism from the uninformed past. They optimistically posit their progressive idea of an equal plane being possible for all people. To them, the only thing that separates the lower class from the higher class is mere circumstance. These progressive minds continue to favor some kind of compensation to the lower class by taking away from the privileged upper class. Despite history providing numerous pieces of evidence to the contrary, they believe that this will fix the class disparities of humanity and push it towards a better future. In reality, this approach simply lowers the universal standard and makes almost everyone low class. At this point, all the proverbial servants will bury their talents and lose the ability to even conceive an idea of achievement or success. Fortunately, the society that makes this collective of inferiors will be lucky to even sustain itself. Like the Soviet Union it will either utterly implode and start from scratch again, or gradually compromise its ideals of equality for profit like China.

However, there is another poor, though not quite as extreme, policy that establishes and maintains an artificial hierarchy based on entitlement rather than merit. For example, Rome rose on the basis of a meritocracy. Wise leaders offered the possibility of advancement in the form of the empire's military and bureaucracy. People born of humble farmers in an obscure province could rise to become a general or imperial advisor in the great city of Rome. Unfortunately, Rome's downfall came when wise leaders foolishly mistook a privileged upbringing for a virtuous one and forfeited the system of rewarding merit to a system that rewarded breeding. In the hierarchy that flourished from roughly the time of Gaius Marius's military reforms (107 BC) to the death of Marcus Aurelius (161 AD) social mobility truly existed and virtue facilitated a rise in the ranks. Individuals made their mark on this part of history providing many admirable and impressive characters for posterity to enjoy forever after. These same individuals would have suffered terrible oppression brought on by inferior minds continuously in power during Rome's decline after the age of the Antonines. The government froze the classes that started saturating anyway, and the imperial government started to reduce the population to serfdom by heavy taxation. From this, one might as well make yet another speculation about Rome's reason for decline and say that the culture tried to oppose the natural hierarchy of man that transcends royal mandates. Rather they should have accepted it and explored the possibilities presented.

Great nations like early Rome come into prominence by embracing this natural order of humanity to a certain extent. They create opportunities for the three classes of people to find their designated place in society. The virtuous high class must lead, the middle must follow and maintain, and the lower class must correct themselves or suffer indefinitely. Plato wrote about this hierarchy in his Republic recognizing the necessity of virtue, but oddly enough, not of the freedom of choosing to be virtuous. True progression (as opposed to collectivists) results from "laissez faire" of natural virtue manifesting itself in individuals. Ayn Rand correctly asserts that those who are blessed with a wise upbringing and superior talents will bring up all the people around them by being left alone to live in greatness. This freedom allows the same souls suffering serfdom half of millennia ago to now enjoy being kings of their own households lazily imagining what their next luxury will be. Abject poverty of homeless starving people that consumed over half the population now affects a tiny portion of the population. As long as all people are free to prove themselves worthy of any of the three levels accorded by nature and morality, then human progress and a rising quality of life will follow.

However, this suitable hierarchy only comes when people are allowed to succeed AND fail. A false hierarchy doomed towards universal poverty exists when people aren't allowed to fail or succeed. The high class is artificially placed with the low class, and vice versa. Thus the world goes to the greedy and foolish men while the good guys perish. In history, this process starts as a decline and ends as a dark age. In modern terms, this mismatch constitutes the way of the third world. The cultures that preserve man's natural and moral hierarchy allow the good guys to govern the world responsibly (by allowing the people to govern themselves) while the foolish and greedy suffer punishment and receive correction. In history, this process starts as rise and ends as complete cultural hegemony. Only a few great nations have gotten near to a perfectly free state respecting a hierarchy of virtue and natural ability, but none have ever maintained it long enough to keep from declining once more into corruption. Fools will always be around to let the failures succeed and the successes fail, and they will always do so to their own demise.

They do it because they think they can break the hierarchy, but it will never happen. Humans will always have three classes of people: the leaders, a small group of people who have creativity, aptitude, and responsibility; the followers, a large group of people who have competence and responsibility towards the leaders; and the misfits, the smallest group of people who have neither competence nor responsibility. The leaders need promotion, the misfits need correction, and the middle need to set the highest standard possible.

Every group will always come in roughly the same numbers when they are born, but a suitable approach can maximize each group's potential. While the misfits will always be around each generation, they can be turned from destructiveness with extra help. Once people recognize the existence of these three groups, then these that have caused every failure in history might be corrected for good, and cut the hierarchy to two groups.

What better place to start this constructive liberating solution for society's corruption than school?

Some sketches during a staff development session

2007-11-21T09:31:00.001-08:00

I had to attend a staff development meeting two days ago. As you can see, I had quite a bit of time to waste, so I drew some stick figures. It was just like being in high school.

Learning the Fun Way

2007-11-20T07:00:00.001-08:00

Judging from the voices of Hollywood and those around the campus, successful teachers are fun teachers. They engage the kids with fun activities that somehow relate with the kids' interests and issues, and they transform them into students for life. They might have some controversial discussions among the kids about the unending banes of poverty, crime, and racial stereotyping. These same teachers will allow maximum creativity on assignments often substituting a given concept for satisfying students’ whims. For an English class, the unconventional yet motivational approach puts rap, poetry, oratory, interpretive dance, essay composition, model making, film, and grammatical exercises in the same academic discipline. These teachers think they have the wisdom of knowing that language equals emotional expression, so they can do away with the archaic practices of reading and writing. Rather, they can put activities more in tune with the students’ interests. This approach consistently appeals to the students who in turn give very little trouble to the teacher managing the vent/creativity sessions. They think it's fun, interesting, and, well, easy.

More than any other subject, English class serves as a pulpit for "fun" teachers. They reach out to the kids by demolishing the rigor and complexity of language and rhetoric. Shakespeare's rich prose and plot structures become reduced to simplistic themes discussed in simple language. Rules of grammar disintegrate into obscurity. They have even reduced the complex and vital skill of actively reading a classic novel to the same realm as passively sitting and watching a movie of that novel. In fact, very few students read books for class but have books read to them by an audiotape or the teacher. The students write very little as well, since their innovative teacher cleverly minimizes the arduous task by offering creative equivalents like artwork with crayons, free-style poetry, or scrapbooks containing specific pictures that somehow convey a meaning. Rest assured, these teachers abandon most objective grading standards and instead follow what their hearts tell them, usually to pass the poor babies (as many will lovingly regard them). Naturally, the kids love this stress-free environment and come to love (or more accurately, not hate) English class as it is now defined for them by the unconventional teacher reaching out.

The result that follows from this new summer camp curriculum replacing actual curriculum is a growing population of illiterates. Kids pass through twelve years of school without reading a single book on their own, writing anything more than a page, or even conceiving a sentence over six words. Many of them reason with the same sophistication as a student in elementary school. Those that pursue a college education learn that the spell and grammar check functions on Microsoft Word can do very little for a person with no real conception of spelling or grammar. Anyone who cares to chat with an average professor from any college faculty will certainly hear a heavy groan at the pathetic quality of students' writing that grows ever worse by the year. As a result, quite a few college professors utilize the same "unconventional" methods of high school English teachers. By doing this, they can escape that tedious task of teaching composition and close reading. Thus, a student may possibly graduate from high school and college without reading or writing proficiently.

This nonobjective treatment towards the English language pervades all levels of schooling. Students of all ages, their parents, and administrators now expect it from English and Reading teachers. If they refuse to teach that way, everyone around them will charge them with being boring, unrealistic, and incompetent. All those lovely authors of the English canon like Hawthorn, Elliot, Shakespeare, Twain, Orwell, and the Bronte sisters that English teachers cherish so deeply because of their ultimate literary beauty now disappear with utter neglect. These teachers stifle their intellectual stirrings and reluctantly push the play button for their emotionally and intellectually stunted students. They know that only fools try to challenge the status quo at a public high school.

Modern culture reflects this choice to remove objectivity and academic discipline from the English language. Eerily similar to the Newspeak of 1984, the only language in history where the number of words decreases each year, English in the United States experiences the same phenomena. Newspapers, which are facing extinction soon, have been edited for people with a sixth grade reading level. Most modern literature pales in comparison with the virtuosic verbiage of the nineteenth century. Magazines have more pictures and fewer words, even ones discussing literature.

Extending the Orwellian analogy, the reduction of vocabulary in English results in a constant diminishment of ideas. Newspeak nullified the ideas of independence and happiness by removing them from the language altogether. The United States suffers this same kind of loss. Many minds don't understand nuance or complexity like they might have before. Politicians demonstrate this decline of thought perfectly. They can treat incredibly complex issues like the environment, immigration, or trade deficits with incredibly simple, but somehow acceptable, answers like "Cut taxes", "More government subsidies", or "build a wall". Naturally, the other venues of culture that cater to the intellectual capacity of the masses follow suit. They simplify their art to petty agendas, gimmicks, or insipid platitudes. Like newspapers, television might also face extinction very soon because of this shameless pandering to ignorance.

People need to understand that the real fun of any academic discipline should come from increased proficiency. Teachers that push their students through the harrying grammar of the English language also enable many more possibilities for their students' thoughts and expression more than any assignment employing arts and crafts. Teachers that assign frustrating essays also open a vital area of critical thought that will eventually liberate young people from shallow propaganda. Teachers that take their kids through the heavy language of classic writers also endow their students with maturity, new ideas, and a larger mental capacity. The struggle demanded by these exercises lack facile amusement, but they do educate youths to rise to challenges of the world awaiting them, which should be the purpose of educational institutions.

Unfortunately, the conflict erupts from those who think educational institutions have different purposes like amusing the populace until they reach the age of employment or official incarceration. Those people often run the schools themselves to the satisfaction of ignorant parents. Like the students who relish inferior education, teachers, administrators, and parents also love the fun unconventional teaching methods because it relieves them of responsibility and makes their lives easy in the meantime.

Naturally, these easy solutions later create society's cultural undoing. Tragically, they create incomplete human beings as well.

Mental Block

2007-11-10T22:36:00.000-08:00

"You, 6655321, are to be reformed," said the prison chief governor from the horrible tale of a Clockwork Orange. In this part of the story, the main character, a young man named Alex goes by a number that the prison assigns him, 6655321. His crime of brutally murdering and robbing an elderly woman placed him behind bars. The faceless quality of the prison setting that reduces every inhabitant to a number and crams them into overcrowded cells muffling their cries. Alex seeks freedom from the colorless block even if that means sacrificing his free will in an operation that make him feel extreme queasiness at any wayward thought arising in his criminal mind. Ignoring admonitions from a sympathetic preacher, Alex foolishly accepts the operation that soon pushes him to eventual self-destruction. It never occurred to Alex to liberate himself from the authorities or his own wanton passions by taking a step towards personal responsibility. Rather, he sought to forfeit any personal responsibility and sedulously acted to preserve and careless life without a conscience as long as possible before it got boring.

Coincidentally, one will find quite a few similarities to the nightmare the between the aforesaid novel and an average public school. Like the prison, many American public schools also assign numbers to their students and cram them into overcrowded rooms. Like Alex, students will seek liberty at any price often sacrificing any viable future they could have had. They throw away personal responsibility and indulge every throbbing impulse of adolescence to the detriment of themselves and all those around them. The anonymity and oppressiveness of their surroundings completely obscures academic achievement, and it absolutely abhors independent and accountable thought.

The hierarchy starts from an unseen big brother, otherwise known as the superintendent. Below him begins a tall stack of district administrators, then school administrators, then department heads, then finally, the teachers. Each level also designates consultants assigned to facilitate the effectiveness of each level. Like the students, each cog in this marvelous machine has an employee number in which to identify oneself. This hierarchy strives to sterilize any community with its sheer vastness and its oppressive mandates to maintain the status quo.

Students and teachers in this system either fall into line with this environment or they are chastised and removed. Both parties make the best of a glum situation to which society has sentenced them. Students escape by doing the least work possible, forcing teachers to entertain them with summer camp activities. Teachers escape by satisfying the students and shedding any desire they formerly had to educate. Administrators will do their jobs by actually keeping the kids in school and taming their spirits for something useful like operating cash registers or picking up garbage. The few students with responsible parents might find a place to learn in the Honors classes where they will learn at grade level if they're lucky. If not, students will sink into a tolerable depression and embrace being dehumanized.

The beauty of this system is that it accommodates everyone. Districts have artfully managed to pack schools to the brim with students with minimal concessions. With so much funding, they have created a world that admits no freedom, no development, no logic, no beauty, and is so downright dystopian that even Orwell would cringe. Real humans are transformed into dogs that perform mindless tricks (i.e. standardized tests), waiting for their next treat and their new chew toy.

Unfortunately, the world does not care to have more mindless sheep to do stupid jobs and lead pointless lives. They can get those sheep in other countries for much less money. The world does need conscientious leaders who can lead the populace out of the doldrums of ignorance and into material and cultural prosperity. As it stands, most Americans are left to themselves to get an education on their own by teaching themselves or by paying absurd amounts of money for remedial classes in college. In present times, a decent education that a person should receive in their teens instead happens in their late twenties. By that time, they will be fixed cogs like their teachers in a vast machine that obfuscates their very humanity. Their youthful energy usually expires, leaving them powerless break the gloomy cycle.

To top off this lurid reality, public schools will continue as they are. Administrators will weed out the insiders who cry out for reform. Outsiders will be brushed off as uninformed about education and disgustingly elitist. Being a monopoly, public school districts will carry on since the competition can only address a small portion of the market. They will throw a bone to concerned parents, and they will give a nice little speech for the community. This is all a façade to please everyone accept the faculty and kids.

Perhaps a century ago, American kids could be likened to Huckleberry Finn or a Tom Sawyer eager to satisfy their abundant curiosities. Now, American kids carry a much greater affinity to a Winston Smith in 1984 or an Alex from A Clockwork Orange. They can choose between complete submission and utter depravity. Unfortunately, the United States has enough of these types and needs to change the institution that propagates it. A good start for this change might be giving students their names again.

A bug of mischief going around

2007-10-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

In one of the earlier episodes of the Simpsons (ironically, a show with one of the most realistic depictions of public school), Bart, a ten-year old fourth grader, and his parents attend a parent conference with Bart's teacher, Ms. Krabappel. She shows the parents how Bart's behavior and approach to the class affects the students around him by providing a 3-d model of the class's academic performance in relation with the spatial proximity to Bart's desk. The model shows a vortex around the hole that indicates Bart's seat in the classroom, demonstrating his corruptive influence in school work. As Ms. Krabappel goes further in examining Bart's performance and behavior, both the father and son tune her out and scratch their heads at any type of reform. Those who watch the show know that Bart's behavior never really changes throughout the series, and his teachers just accept it.

Unfortunately, this fictional situation on the animated sitcom plays out in reality constantly. The bad student that terrorizes classrooms does indeed exist and teachers will quit their jobs because of them. Even after so many student behavior studies and innovative disciplinary protocols, the best solution that schools have come up with is simply isolating these students in in-house suspension or at alternative schools, otherwise known as "junior" penitentiaries. Even with these options available, schools continue to have issues with the problem students who compromise instruction immeasurably because too many of them exist, and the junior penitentiaries can only hold so many. Thus, public school districts and the governments that fund them have to reconsider this growing problem that has received mere duct tape style solutions for the short term, or public school and its actual purpose to educate will fail completely and actually harms a child's intellectual development (assuming most people haven't made this conclusion already).

The best analogy, which probably allows the best approach, compares student misbehavior with a plague. Plagues usually arise in unsanitary conditions with unhealthy inhabitants, they infect the masses, they receive treatment too late, and they come in different strains of the illness that each require a different type of treatment, and those stricken with the plague hardly ever get cured but eventually die from their illness. Students’ misbehavior occurs along the same lines. Bad students usually arise in overcrowded and poorly run schools with undereducated students. Teachers and administrators shrug off the problem which has not developed into anything serious (otherwise, illegal) yet. A student stricken with the childish misbehavior will undermine the classroom and spread it to other weak-minded children lacking role-models and maturity. Finally, the misbehavior takes on a myriad of different forms and necessitates complex disciplinary system to treat each form. However, the bad students usually stay bad anyway and will see themselves out of school with minds sentenced to death. The lurid picture haunts the minds of teachers who see infected young minds everyday while the district provides an academic cesspool and various forms of mental bloodletting for treatment.

Fortunately, society has progressed and reason has provided a solution to plagues. If a community simply removes the conditions for plagues to fester, then those plagues will be minimized. Perhaps, if the school community removes conditions for misbehavior, that misbehavior will be minimized. Relieving the classroom size, school size, and even district size could resolve many behavior issues and classroom control. Schools should also reconsider the use of time and the heavy restrictions of freedom, mental and physical, placed on students. The prison-like restrictions lead many of them into depressions that make them susceptible to misbehavior. Once these conditions have been set, schools can complete the preventative measure of misbehavior by instilling healthy habits into their students like independent reading and daily exercise that build immunity against vitiating strains of misbehavior.

Now that the community has taken measure to prevent plagues, they can address much fewer illnesses that still take place and succeed. Schools would enter the same situation that allows them to beneficially affect the misbehaving student and improve him for once, instead of quarantining him like a leper and letting him die while dragging down students around him like they used to. Imagine the possibilities for young minds in such a world made clean and free. The dark ages of ignorance wiped out with plague could accordingly reemerge in a scholastic renaissance breaking the shackles of nature and revealing the dazzling potential of humanity.

To make these kinds of changes probably require more spending power for districts, but not really that much. The remedies to bad behavior have taken their toll in the short term solutions that could be better used on long term ones. Districts spend millions of dollars on hiring an army of security guards, a vast array of resource teachers for struggling kids, security cameras, thousands of outdated computers accompanied with useless educational software, and vast amounts of bureaucracy maintaining such an inefficient deleterious institution. Rather, districts could build more schools, reorganize themselves into more independent units, and reform grueling daily schedules that keep kids from ever breathing freely. Otherwise, schools will continue to reverse their intention of instructing children and making them responsible citizens and instead make illiterate degenerates destroying society after they finish destroying the classroom. Bart Simpson will not be the exception but the norm.

The Wonderful World of Reading

2007-10-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

The week before the school year begins, the district calls upon their teachers to enter the school campus and prepare for the new year. Emotions and optimism fill the hallways as new teachers and even veterans draw up strategies to make the curriculum engaging and really “get those kids up to grade level this year” (the administrators will make sure of this). New teachers rekindle memories of their own English classes that influenced them to teach in that subject area. Ideally, they imagine discussing those rich tomes of the cannon like Shakespeare's tragedies, the vast industrial worlds of Dickens’, the harrowing nightmares of Orwell, or the touching adolescent studies of Salinger. "This time," they think, "I will really make the text come alive for them, and even include some more material from some other authors like Marquez and Dostoevsky." They outline some possible lesson plans around these ideas and some provocative journal prompts to expand their students' means of expression. Indeed, during that golden summer week before the kids come, even the hideous, cracked, gray blocks of the school campus will not temper the dreams of ambitious new teachers.

Then the school year begins, and mandatory diagnostic exams reveal a shattering fact: Many of the kids are illiterate, and almost all of them read a good bit below grade level. The new teachers will plow on, though a bit more cautiously, and assign their wonderful classics to the kids and hope for the best. A vast majority of students do not even bother reading a sentence and taunt the new teachers to pass the time since they have given up on work in English class. The few students that do try will drift into daydreams because the text challenges them beyond measure. Even the sober teachers wise enough to adjust their material to the students’ actual reading level encounter the same challenge. Weeks of the students' mediocrity eventually wear the teachers down to jejune worksheets and books on tape. Exercises meant to improve grammar, composition, and analysis dissipate into nothingness the same way they did the last eight grades of the students' lives. The status quo's illiteracy remains unchanged, and students will continue to view their futures in terms of what plans they have for the next weekend.

However, schools will fiercely shelter their exceptional students filling the Honors classes. Those students escaped the rampant ignorance and misbehavior of the "regular" classes through their test scores, parents, or last names. Realistically, they do not truly excel in academics, but simply function at their proper grade level and manage to maintain it for their twelve years (though many will do this by cheating). Many teachers actually come from this bubble of Honors students, but they never realized that they were only part of ten percent of the student body until they start seeing the school as a teacher.

Naturally, the situation of mass illiteracy plagues many minds paid to worry. Administrators can only suggest more benchmarks, assessments, and meaningless staff developments laden with useless educational buzzwords. Most teachers simply quit after a year of failed attempts. Other teachers settle for the busywork assignments that succeed in maintaining an orderly classroom and the students' brainwaves. An incredibly precious few, however, will defy these positively scary odds.

These models of successful teachers never receive their due credit. Students, accustomed to indolence and coddling, hate these teachers because they actually demand effort from the students. Other teachers envy them for their success and their unorthodoxy in teaching (for one must know that teaching effectively is highly unorthodox). For the same reasons, administrators, if they ever acknowledge their existence, keep watchful eye on any signs of dangerous independence of thought and virtue. The model teacher walks a lonely road, but he saves the world from a chaotic ignorance with his resilience.

Surprisingly, the methods of these teachers do not contain any gimmicks or novelties. They simply possess an incredible amount of patience, endurance, and wisdom, which they model everyday to students eager to break that image. Their lessons require that the students exert themselves independently. They explain the relevance of every technique and skill, and model these techniques and skills constantly for the class. They require accountability for academic performance and use any means to procure it to the malaise of those students hoping for anonymity and scraping by like always. With such methods, everyday for these teachers will be a draining battle. However, those last weeks of the year bear the fruit of responsible kids armed to teach themselves independently, for the wise teacher will realize that this is the end education should try to pursue.

The dreams of teaching classic novels will come someday. Unfortunately, most English teachers spend most of their school year preparing a student for the task before embarking upon it. New teachers should prepare themselves to repeat simple directions and explanation ad infinitum. They should prepare themselves for the tedious procedures of discipline and the many phone calls home for recalcitrant students. Sadly, they might find themselves the first teacher to actually ask something of the kids. This image might lack glamour, and it might conflict with the dramatizations of Hollywood, but as Aristotle rightly said over two millennia ago, "The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet." If teachers heed this quote, they can move forward and carry their poor students with them on their back. The load might weigh them down at first, but the students will walk on their own soon enough. At that point, the true dream of the teacher will materialize.

A trip down memory lane

2007-09-23T16:57:00.001-07:00

I took a ride to my old school the other day. On the way through the neighborhoods, my eyes caught the familiar sight of beautiful clean houses with trimmed lawns and gracefully aging trees softening the sun's rays. A few happy people escaped the entrapment of their televisions and took their pets or children out for a walk. The charms of the middle class neighborhood shone in the glory of the approaching autumn. I inhaled the clean air away from the busy highways, absorbed the quiet scene around me, and forgot about the problems of the week. Then I arrived at destination that always violently clashed with the tranquil pleasant surroundings, my old school.

It's a typical center of learning for adolescents. It's made up of a set of modernist blocks unimaginatively put together with a few windows. They stand tall and ominous at three stories overlooking the lawn littered with myriad junk food wrappers. Cracks run through the few sidewalks provided for students outside. In back of the school, carelessly placed dumpsters block the way from the campus to the baseball fields and tennis courts and fill the air with the pungent fumes of garbage. Lying behind the school is a vast labyrinth of portables expanding every year (from five of them to seventeen within only five years). To their credit, they do manage to keep the football field pristine, which might suggest something about public education's priorities. Unfortunately, the rest of the campus is dirty, colorless, and more psychologically oppressive than Munch's The Scream.

I choose the school as a destination because I like to ride through the empty walkways in the evenings or weekends, and I sometimes look over the fields and the setting sun. For a moment, my mind conjures the old memories of my high school days waiting for the bus with my friends. Those long nauseous days spent in that hideous complex dissolved as I looked outside to nice neighborhood and the possibilities of being free in a few years. My friends all felt that way. God pitied us and afforded that moment of relief to our suppressed spirits. Even rain or extreme cold didn't take the relief away. We pressed against the windows and continued to ponder what else there might be in life. Then the bus came and we rested for the next day.

Along with remembering those nice moments, I also remember the duller painful moments too. Every time I go to work and walk into Horizon High School (the bigger brother of my old school), I remember the feeling of dread pulsing through my being everyday when I was a student. It would be the familiar world of big crowds, tense hours filled with pointless work and evaluations, and an ugly prison-like setting. Powerful impressions developed over 12 years don't just float away just because one's being paid to go. It's something to be handled deliberately.

I consider this blog my catharsis. It helps me identify with my kids though their thinking never attains the same lucidity. Their expression will be shortchanged by their idiotic parents and an indifferent school system that can hardly sustain itself, let alone educate. Maybe they'll attempt to be semi-autoditacts like myself and find the right words. As a reading teacher, I might be the only one to give them the necessary tool, literacy, to enable independent edification.

I actually carry that thought with me as I teach. Despite the hard realism every public teacher has to face, some of them really do say, "I'm a teacher and I can make a difference. It might be a small difference, but it'll be significant. I can smile, put up the blinds letting in the sunlight, and actually help the children escape their ugly worlds with the power of language and the wisdom it conveys. The kids don't need to feel the pain I and many millions of kids felt. Or, more realistically, they don't need to feel as much pain. I can only do so much in packed school of 5200 kids."

From what I see, those that do this are the best teachers. There're only a pitiful few of them though.

Supersize me...

2007-09-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

This past week over 5300 kids were enrolled at Horizon Center. The Horizon campus includes over five multi-storied buildings and encompasses the whole horizon from nearly a mile away thus earning its name. However, the classes are still horribly overfilled and space is very cramped. Teachers often instruct (or at least, try to instruct) classes of over thirty kids, some left standing because of the lack of desks. Every room has a class in it all eight periods including the cafeteria, auditorium, and library. The students in halls stop at foot-traffic jams, and some of the more aggressive personalities flare up in hallway rage. The building becomes unnaturally warm from the presence of so many people. This center of learning and development for adolescents quite literally overflows with them.

Horizon takes the lead for sheer numbers of students, but nearly forty other high schools in the district share the burden of overpopulation. To address the shortage of space, the schools tack on more and more portables, never minding the fact that their solution is temporary, inadequate, and ugly. To address the problem of effectively managing such large crowds and the large accompanying staff, the schools usually just let the teachers fend for themselves and hire more security. Accordingly, no one bothers to properly furnish classrooms lacking a phone and working computer except generous teachers who will buy these things themselves. Even teachers without rooms (also known as “floaters”) are obliged to snatch any stray carts they can find since the school cannot provide new ones.

At the helm of this sprawling school district (eight times bigger than any other district in the metroplex) sits a massive bureaucracy with more layers than an onion. They answer their under-equipped educators drowning in a sea of kids by enforcing more teacher orientations. These tedious orientations coin more useless teaching buzzwords like "teacher-student synergy" and "cross-department interdisciplinary pedagogical development" along with demonstrating the new expensive teaching software that will never be available in the classrooms. All the teachers in the district can attest to the incompetence of the HR department that forces new applicants to waylay the administrator in charge of their application papers in the parking lot before they can get in their office. In keeping with their organizational ineptitude, HR, which oddly works on a 4-day schedule during summer, always fails to fill every teaching position resulting in a number of substitutes teaching the overcrowded classrooms for the year. To their credit, the district's administrators can very skillfully evade every form of accountability and sustain their useless existence somehow. Furthermore, the development of the Internet has facilitated their lack of accountability even more by taking human beings completely out of the picture. The huge hive of offices and their bureaucratic bees only need to refer a person to the website plagued with bugs before they take their two hour lunch break.

In light of these problems that betray themselves so quickly, few people clamor for the reduction of the monstrous size of the district, the schools, or the administration. Parents, editorialists, and politicians alike push for additional funding for this dysfunctional educational quagmire that desperately needs to be completely dissolved and reorganized. Horizon does not need more portables or another floor in their main building; it needs to be split into six schools. The district of Horizon does not need to assume other failing districts nor does it need redundant departments and their ongoing "investigations"; it needs to be broken down into seven smaller districts. The overwhelming magnitude of responsibilities drowns everyone from superintendents to teachers who all suffer terrible turnover rates. Kids don't exaggerate when they equate school with a prison or factory. They really do become numbers with ID Cards in a huge system of crowd control faced with complete anonymity in an ugly world filled with graffiti and many unhappy people.

People misinterpret the success of private schools, charter schools, and schools in suburban school districts. They attribute their success to well-reared kids with educated caring parents that have the financial resources to help them. While these factors do play a part in their success, the real virtue of those schools lies in their small size. With less money to work with, they wisely handle as many students as they know they can handle. The teachers receive their basic needs like a computer and phone along with a deducted paycheck, and they gladly accept it for manageable classrooms and a supportive faculty. Many of them don't even have actual certification, but they frequently achieve more success than the seasoned teacher with a graduate degree in education working in a public school. Obviously, more funding and training do not make better teachers, but the environment does.

Unfortunately, the mammoth school district continues to roam through an ice age of academic progress oblivious to common sense. It has a monopoly over the city’s youth and thus has no real incentive to improve. Until all kids can have room to think and breathe easily, a few concerned parents with ample means will scurry off to the suburbs or the nearest parochial school. Unfortunately, the rest of the kids will fend for themselves in a Malthusian nightmare promoting the strong (and often dishonest) and condemning the weak and disadvantaged.

Math, Science, and the World of Tomorrow

2007-08-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

In 1957, a small satellite called Sputnik was launched from the icy tundra of the ex-superpower, Russia, into Earth's orbit. As a result, American educators posited new fundamentals of learning in their characteristic ambiguity: Children of these modern times need to learn Science and Math. If the communists could send a hunk of metal into space, then it somehow seemed imperative that Americans overhaul their education system so they could send hunks of metal into space as well.

A huge need arose for math and science teachers to train students not only to master arithmetic, but complex algebra, Geometry and its endearing proofs, trigonometry, and even calculus. In Science, kids embarked upon the etymological terminology of Biology, the titrations of Chemistry, the rocks of Geology, and the infinite variables in Physics. The crown jewel of these classes would be the shoddy projects submitted to the school science fair. In modern society, these seemingly abstract disciplines and their charming empirical ventures would help Americans cope with the evolving job markets and world challenges facing us. No one actually verified this hypothesis posited nearly half a century ago but rather pushed it even further. The pundits and politicians prescribed more math and science for everyone.

Naturally, because enthusiasm in space exploration has waned recently, "experts" have employed a different line of reasoning for the perpetuity of abstract mathematical and scientific concepts. Edifying themselves with a few science fiction novels, they claim these disciplines in math and science will lay foundations of understanding new technologies and their functions which will thus help mankind's pursuit of a better life. Furthermore, Americans must compete with the throngs of Chinese and Indians graduates with Math and Science degrees. If they don't, the Asians might steal American jerbs. (Never mind the fact that Indians and Chinese will steal these jobs anyway since they will work for a fifth of the price.)

Unfortunately, this reasoning really doesn't work. While Technology and Engineering might utilize a few concepts of math and physics, most of the jobs in these fields are learned in training or tinkering with the machines. Universities and many community colleges can usually lay the groundwork for any necessary knowledge required to set up networks, repair and construct manufacturing machines, constructing bridges and buildings, etc. However, pumping kids with more formal (remember, most of this material is far from applicative) math and science from elementary to high school seems unnecessary and tedious.

The actual need for formal mathematicians and scientists really remains the same as it ever has in history. The people of today face problems that existed half a century ago that technology was supposed to solve, and most people’s daily concerns remain the same. The changes in society concomitant with computers, nuclear power, internet, and cell phones, in reality, raise more philosophical questions than scientific ones. However, the philosophical disciplines like history, language, and the social sciences take the backseat to math and science. Even practical applications like mechanics, carpentry, computer programming, and robotics take a backseat to math and science. The foundations of humanity and culture in the arts take the backseat to math and science. Students will have to meet today's actual challenges on their own time because schools would rather prepare them for the next superfluous standardized math test.

The problems waylaying the world today can be derived from an ultimate lack of wisdom, practical and moral. The lack of a historical conscience leads Americans to make the same mistakes again and again, on civic and personal levels. The lack of language mastery and the active acquisition of knowledge from literacy lead to the intellectual and professional stagnation and exploitation of the lower classes. The lack of the arts results in a materialist gaudiness that taints and clutters the surrounding environment. The lack of philosophy and social sciences result in so much waste, bureaucratic irrelevance, and spiritual oppression. The lack of vocational training leads to crime, unemployment, and more waste.

Young people really do want to face the world of today and work for progress, but they don’t have the tools to do so. That pivotal enthusiasm to make a positive difference and benefit society wanes as the years of useless classes render them apathetic and despondent. The problems of society remain or actually become compounded by unmotivated graduates. These problems will need attention sometime, but all the algebraic theorems and dissected hamsters in the world won't solve them. The neglected subjects of History and common sense might show this.

Studies have shown...

2007-08-06T11:12:00.001-07:00

In a recent study, educational researchers have shown that kids who start kindergarten a year later have an advantage throughout their academic careers and are 7 percent more likely to succeed in school. Many newspaper and magazine articles concerned with the academic welfare of upcoming generations have latched on to this study, promoting the practice of starting school later. Hardly any of them bother to analyze the reasons behind the ever slight advantage older kids have in school, but the reasons are usually negligible in these studies. The conscientious writers will simplistically conclude that older kids equal better students, and all the good parents do it; just look at all the pie charts and graphs that prove it.

To any sufficiently grounded reader who can dodge the over generalizing tones of the writers and their "evidence", these educational studies have very little relevance or accuracy. However, educators and educational certification programs positively live by these studies which are conducted arbitrarily and often poorly. Many of the superfluous inanities that bewildered students encounter at school often derive from the idiotic conclusions made from these studies.

Consider this: An educational guru researcher, Dr. Gaardner has determined that the mind has multiple intelligences, which oddly correspond with subjects at school. For instance, some kids have math intelligence (math), some have verbal intelligence (English), some have artistic intelligence (art), and some even have kinetic intelligence (P.E.). He proves this by compiling some numbers based on children's responses to some inquiries he drew up that probably ask the kids' favorite subject at school. He veils his lack of objectivity with many charts and numbers, and his readers succumb to his apparent hard logic that defies those terrible IQ tests that put some minds ahead of others in ability. Dr. Gaardner triumphantly makes all minds equal in ability by classifying whatever a child likes, be it videogames or soccer, as a simply a different intelligence that schools fail to recognize. Therefore, it's up to educators to recognize and channel these diverse proclivities of students in the classroom.

In response to this logic, fledging teachers learn that they must create lesson plans that utilize music, movement, art, math, science, and foreign languages to effectively educate kids in any subject. Thus, teachers will assign projects with no learning value whatsoever. The concepts and information that are taught become distorted. Inevitably, time and money for the variety of resources necessary (especially computers and a plethora of software) are wasted. Teachers who witness the failure of method advocated by their superiors either leave or become jaded about the students they teach and the administrators they work for.

Gaardner's compassionate originality earned points with people looking for the ultimate quick fix towards academically impaired kids who lack motivation, but it’s counterproductive and just plain wrong. In terms of true mental ability, the closest measurement has been the IQ test. Consequently, studies show that kids with high IQ turn out to have high intelligences in all of Gaardner’s areas while kids with low IQs have low intelligences in the same spectrum. However, actual studies have shown that even the IQ test has many flaws and that the mind can gain in IQ points throughout a person's life, which renders its evaluation of intellectual potential useless and even detrimental in the classroom. Not surprisingly, Gaardner's Multiple Intelligence criteria are even more useless and detrimental.

While he continues to produce more fanciful theories on education, Gaardner is only one among many “experts” who shape the way American public schools look today. Their studies evaluate a human being's response like a rat's response and dictate the direction of school administration and instruction. Maybe that explains why so many campuses operate like rat mazes or sheep farms, or why so many children painfully suppress their human gift of thought and inquiry in the public school setting. The purposes and intents behind schools have become clouded and ridiculous by trying to use Pavlovian experiments laden with flawed judgments and reasoning.

Unfortunately, psychologists will continue to churn out these studies, and readers will follow them. Don't be surprised if the official age of kindergarten moves up to six years old because of this latest study.

Educational Wish List

2007-07-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

"Getting our kids ready for a complex world is the nation's second-most important challenge, behind controlling terrorism. The education challenge grows even more important when you factor in the large – and irreversible – wave of Latino immigrants enrolling in schools across America."
-An editorialist for the Dallas Morning news writing yet another article about education's importance.

The chant for better education in the American public system continues. The message drones on and on, everyday, ad nausea. A concerned American may only read the paper for three days, and find at least five editorial columns on education. The writers will demand that school ends poverty, racial inequality, crime, unassimilated illegal aliens, sexual immorality, obesity, and naturally, widespread ignorance. The newspapers actually have more items on this wish list; these are simply the latest to be read. The editorials accomplish very little since they offer absolutely no ways to actually address these demands in social progress, but they do effectively cloud the definition of school.

Writers and pretty much everyone outside of education don't know that their clamoring often makes the problem more difficult and, even worse, puts the creation of a solution into the government’s hands. Of course, they don’t intend to do this. They just seek greater accountability from a bloated, poorly run government institution. This is a valid judgment for most public school districts, especially ones in big cities, which are in fact bloated and poorly run. However, simply asking schools to do more does not solve the problem. Rather than offer solutions, so many columnists cynically make their demands and conclude with a "Shape up teachers!" with the tacit consent of frustrated parents who need someone to blame. Unfortunately, piling on so many more duties and burdens to school create a philosophic conundrum for schools: Just what are we trying to do?

This question used to be easy. People knew that schools were meant to guide (notice, I didn't use the verb, force-feed) kids in learning how to read, write, and reason logically. Like a mother bird regurgitating food to the baby bird, the teacher regurgitates these huge skills into digestible servings that the student can handle at their respective level. If the student follows the teacher's instructions, he will climb the tower of knowledge, and eventually arrive at a point where he can teach himself and keep informed. At that point, he could find a trade or attend a college or university and try to pursue the reaches of his intellectual potential according to his own academic proclivities. The student's success depends on his willingness to achieve, which in turn depends on his parent's willingness to encourage achievement. If these qualities do not present themselves, the student wouldn't have to burden the teacher nor wouldn't burden the student.

Now, school has become a complicated place. All children must attend it, even illegal aliens and the severely mentally disabled. Actually, this rule has necessitated vast truancy departments set on catching miscreants playing hooky. All students must learn material at a certain level at the same or similar pace despite having very different capabilities and very different backgrounds. All students must take seven or eight different classes everyday and spend at least 7 hours a day in a school building even if it's unnecessary and even detrimental to independent study. All students must proceed to some kind of higher education after completing 13 years of school as if a four-year college was the only way to adequately prepare kids for the real world. All students must find some intrinsic motivation in learning, despite the frequent pointless assessments and ensuing punitive consequences for not performing that effectively blow that concept of learning for fun into the realm of fantasy. All student behavior and discipline must be held accountable to the national standard even if they are criminals, addicted to substances, or come from families that encourage irresponsibility. All kids must be physically fit (this is a relatively new one) despite their poor meal choices (including school lunch) and chronically lethargic living habits. All kids must know the details of reproduction and effective contraceptives even if they still continue to have children regularly like their parents did before them. All kids must learn a foreign language despite their struggles with English. All kids must be capable on the newest technology, so they watch it become obsolete the next year if it's not obsolete already. All kids must read the designated canon of books, which are often years beyond their level.

In essence, schools must now become the omnipotent ubiquitous influence in every developing individual. Every aspect must be covered from sexual activity to a nominal understanding of the prescribed canons of school literature including riveting works like The Great Gatsby and Great Expectations. Furthermore, every demand must be implemented and assessed collectively. Every moral failing of parents and the students themselves (don't be fooled, young people aren't completely blameless for their stupidity) must be undertaken and accounted for by the school. Luckily, the endless vices of materialistic modern society amply provide a continuous flow or moral failings and thus more demands. Finally, for all those who don't have these failings in discipline, morality, or character, they will be put with those that do and gradually be pulled down with them. Schools will determine success and failure in all matters of life since they will eventually encompass all levels of judgment. The good teacher will be the one that effectively keeps his kids in a prosaic delirium. The good student will be the kid that follows orders (no matter how irrelevant they might be) and complains the least. Surely, someone might find their valedictorians having this obsequious quality instead of actual cerebral aptitude.

If this sounds Orwellian, it's because it is. One only needs to visit the nearest school and remark the eerie resemblance it has to jail or factory. Schools are the intimidating monoliths of the collective. Like every collective, they will never endow brilliance or virtue. No collective ever has. The decisions made by the individual will always triumph over the decisions of the collective. Like they were in the past, schools should only be the tools to enlightenment providing the means to individual progress, nothing more. Otherwise, intellectual responsibility, personal discipline, and academic quality in general become severely compromised. Just take a look at American public schools.

Still, how can people hold schools accountable if not by making demands of them? After all, kids need to be ready for the new challenges of the modern world. Schools need to teach the kids before China takes over and every menial job not done by machines will be exported to Asia or South America.

The only way to improve is to stop making demands. Clean the slate of school's responsibilities and determine, realistically, how it can serve the intellectual progress of students. Allow the kids and parents a choice in what they want. Pave the way for independent study instead of clinging naively to the extended sessions of jejune worksheets and standardized tests. That huge, nasty school bureaucracy that infects every large community can be purged and greatly simplified. Real results or progression could be achieved instead a great mass of nothing that costs so many tax dollars. Kids shouldn't have to wait until college to actually learn something on their own.

Unfortunately, government never gets smaller. If any improvement arrives, it will come from a resilient individual conquering the barriers of the collective. Good parents and good teachers are also necessary, but they’re very few of them. It's unfortunate that most students would have to follow the advice of Mark Twain for now, "Don't let school get in the way of your education."

The "Urban" school

2007-07-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

As part of the certification requirements for my school, I had to observe one of the schools in DISD. I like to think I made an appropriately lurid picture of the "urban" school. It's pretty typical though.

Field Observation #1

As I drove through the pristine lofts emitting their rays of stylish cosmopolitan pleasantness uptown, I searched for my designated school of observation, North City High School. The expectation of a school matching the area around it soothed my worried mind about some well-off kids likely taking that step out of the ignorant swamp the school years I knew into that tall mountain of academic reform touted by so many schools these days. Following the maxim of conventional wisdom (or more truthfully, conventional prejudice), I assumed affluence equaled ability. However, I forgot another important maxim (again, arising from conventional prejudice), the affluent despise poverty and always opt for the nearest private institution. Behind the new cafes, boutiques, and Vespa dealerships lies an old crumbling building accompanied by some monotone portables complete with an unkempt lawn and a parking lot paved with weeds and gravel. This was North City High School. Beyond the school are some crowded tenements. This was where the school’s students came from.

I observed Remedial English teacher, who happened to be the department chair. He took on the students that basically suffered from illiteracy, requiring them to take his class, titled Reading 2. Failing students of Reading 1 needed to continue on into Reading 2. While talking to me in private, the teacher clarified his class’s title more accurately as, “Reading -1”.

Judging from the procedures of class, curriculum originated wholly from the TAKS standardized test. In the first two sessions that I observed, the teacher devoted class time to copying three sample essays from the TAKS test. They briefly discussed the differences between good essays and bad essays, but most of the kids concentrated on finishing their copying. Once the students completed the TAKS later that month, I eagerly awaited what the class would work on afterwards. Observing people copying sample essays for TAKS bored me probably more than it bored the students.

Unforuntately, the week after the TAKS served as free time for the kids as a reward for their good work that whole year. Again, this was a fruitless observation for me. However, the teacher assure me that the following week was devoted to preparation for Lord of the Flies, the first real book that they would read that year in Reading 2.

When I came in the next week, preparation included watching an extremely old documentary (almost contemporary with the period it covered) of Hitler and the Nazi regime. The students were to make connections of Fascism with the government that the kids set up in Lord of the Flies. This connection proved difficult with the kids since most of them slept during the documentary and somehow had no prior knowledge of World War II. Dismayed at their ignorance, the teacher muttered that they would be perfect goons for following a dictator like Hitler.

In my last session, I observed them trying to outline an essay concerning the first third of the book. The students did not know how to write an outline for an essay, or much less, write an essay. The prompt for the essay asked them about the necessity of rules in society and how the boys in the book recreated a system of rules on their island. The students spent much of the period either staring at an empty page, fiddling with a broken pencil sharpener, or sleeping (I marveled at this, since I personally found the seats incredibly uncomfortable). Noticing the blank pages on the desks, the teacher became flustered and hastily showed them how to make an outline for an essay on the chalk board, which the students then voraciously copied. When the period ended, the teacher sarcastically commented to me, “Walking into this classroom is like catching a glimpse of the Dark Ages. No such thing as reading or writing, or organized thought. Just a bunch of brutes filled with random meaningless thoughts.”

Indeed, I thought of the Dark Ages when reviewing the type of environment that these students enter. They are cramped in a dark mean building with small rooms at school as well as their home, which they often share with nine other people. The teacher rigorously beats them into submission like serfs by intimidation, insults, and threats of law enforcement (it is not uncommon for students to mysteriously disappear after an outbreak in class). As a result, the kids carry poor spirits about school and develop only a rudimentary thinking in academics that will never expand or help in any way. I can see that the students have accepted their fate as mediocre dullards along with their teachers. The teachers mistake their cynicism for realism to justify their lack of assistance to these already impoverished kids. Very much like the Dark Ages (history has so many lessons), the school maintained order but at a very high cost.

After my sessions at the school, I often mulled about a resolution to this problem that plagues most urban schools, but I found that a real conclusion would only come when I became a teacher. So, I would usually grab a drink at the nearby Starbucks, admire uptown, and forget about the whole thing altogether like most people.

Notes on Subsitute Teaching Part II

2007-07-10T13:05:00.000-07:00

"Today wasn't as bad as it I expected. I'm only going to have four periods to do and two of them are floral design (small classes with girls), one of them is BioMed (the class with Indian kids who seem to like me), and only one Agriculture (ugh, the knuckleheads). And, on top of the small load, I get to go home. I just hope that I don't get picked for another class on one of my off periods. I think that I've gained a bit of seniority at this school though and now the other subs are getting picked. I say this beause the secretary was talking about her regular subs (ie. me) and that they're great, plus I was only saddled with one extra class, the BioMed (to make it a full day) instead of 3 which she is entitled to put on me. I guess all that leaving early business and other happily unmentioned jabbering on my part has been all forgotten. I've been blessed the chaos of public high schools. "

"It was something of an uplifting thing to overhear a conversation in my first class. Apparently, some guy was discussing religion and Christianity and how this football coach (some of the biggest oafs you'll run into by the way), is a mean old man, but professes to being a Christian. I guess the coach got the great idea of preaching instead of conducting practice for the football players. The girls being Mexican Catholics thought that it was wrong to do that kind of thing, but that religion was important and the guy should respect that. The guy relented from his brutish way of talking and conceded to the girls. It gives me the idea that more mild mannered girls might be the key to pacifying the more at-risk guys and getting them and their children into church. That eases my mind a bit about their future.

The library seems full of life today. Two classes are doing some "research" on college campuses and college life and all that. I have my doubts as to the actual pertinence of this activity to some of the kids who appear to be sleeping right now, but I hope all the best for them. In back of me there was some faculty meeting about ID badges and their cool new functions (oh the joys of an administration career in education) that the teachers rightly yawn at. So, I guess I won't be lulled to sleep like other days I take a nice comfy chair in here.

I had a thought on my mind when subbing for some teachers. Is it a regular thing that women will adorn their desks with baby pictures, and them and their friends, but never them and their husbands? Is it the same way at your job? Or are they divorced? I know some aren't divorced, they just prefer their little babies. What is it about the whole maternal attachment? Maybe you could tell me. Heh, maybe you'll get it too.

A feeling of familiarity with the kids and the building have definitely eased my mind somewhat about my work. I pretty much know what to expect and I'm even knowing faces, and the kids know me. It makes a difference, for sure. Oh well, sticking to high schools which are few and constant certainly gives me that opportunity."

"Right now, I'm in a class that has only 3 people left in it. the rest seem to have gone to some pep rally. One of the kids has been staring at his fingers for over 20 minutes that makes me wonder if he has some natcotic buildup in his veins causing some hyper extended stupor in his mind. The other is a anime girl clad in all of hot topic's latests threads and another is some quiet Mexican kid...."

"Today was a swell day. Much better than yesterday. The teacher I subbed for trained his classes well. The kids knew what to do and most didn't give me any crap except for first period pleading for a "free day". But, even they finished their worksheets. So, it was a good day. Everytime I go to that school, Newman Smith, I'm pleasantly suprised. They have a good faculty. I can't really say that for the school yesterday, which was its rival, R. L. Turner. I was back to normal and got some reading done and there hasn't been any call from anyone.

Heh, one of the highlights of the day was this program I could use. It controls the whole network of computers so when kids were looking at things they weren't supposed to, I could override and close it. I only got to use it one class though, and most of the kids were good. I did get to close some anime fan art thing. That felt nice."

"Today was a crumbum day that I just wasn't ready for. Agriculture should be renamed "Dreg 101". The teacher left me with a pack of untamed hoodlums and a lesson plan written on a post-it note. It was a shitty situation. Kids came in leisurely having no assigned seats, no routine, no notice that there'd be a sub, or any kind of consequence. They had an assignment that they knew wouldn't be graded and a whole bunch of time to be annoying.On top of it all, they were all boys, and all delinquents. Simply, a situation that makes you cringe.

I held my own and did pretty well keeping them from killing each other. Though, at the end of the day, I just wanted to go so I thought I'd let the class leave early. Seriously, this class had NOTHING to do. And I knew very well that what I was doing was wrong and there really wasn't anything to justify myself except that I was tired, bored, and wanted to see if I could actually get away with it. Plus, I just really hate walking through overcrowded hallways with nasty kids. I dismissed the class 8 or 7 minutes early. I had my stuff ready and took it to the office where I'd sign out. As I was signing out, the secretary received a call right then about my dismissing my class and I got reprimanded. I meekly pleaded that I just wanted to avoid the bustle of kids, and that the group was small and they completed the (non-existent) lesson plan incredibly fast. Oh well, she told me that I'm not supposed to do that and that I was caught either way. She told me not to do it again and that I could go since the teacher I was subbing for came back anyway. I apologized and left. I don't think I'll get banned, but you never know....

Ok, I just called the sub system, and I was requested (as it I was specially requested) to sub again for the same class next week. I even called the lady to verify and she was very friendly. I took it. Kewliez (yes, there it is in writing). I guess I'm off the hook in that case. Better get some more word searches."

"I managed to get a break. It's always appreciated. I have one more class then I'm coming back home to eat. The classes have been going just fine. I'm pretty used to the behavior kids feel like giving. They always come in loud and obnoxious, they leave as quiet as mice. It's the same ol' song. Children are never creative or new. I know them better than they know themselves."

"I'm subbing for ESL right now. Boy, is it quiet. One of the great marvels of technology is this new program catered for English learners. So, at the moment, the kids are staring at the screen doing whatever. Well, honestly, only some are doing what they're supposed to be done, some others are making a meager effort, and the rest are staring off into space. Heh, I love ESL."

"My 3rd period has come in and they started. I had to quiet down a few chatty ones, but it's cool now. Taking a closer glance at the program they're doing, it looks pretty dumb. More memory games than actual language comprehension. But, so it goes. People (at least, education people) are harping on using technology to teach, but it just seems super expensive and utterly useless, even serving to dumb down the kids. I got to sub for a teacher who had to attend some workshop that was supposed to train the teachers on this new software that they might receive. It's alot like that thing you have in your class where there's a question on the overhead and all the kids can answer it with a remote that's given to them and the results are immediately sent to the teacher's computer. Even in Law School, the thing is stupid and time wasting. Imagine it in the hands of middle schoolers who are the most hazard prone individuals you'll run across. What's more, each machine is 4000 dollars! That's one machine per class! That's more than my whole yearly salary as a sub at that district. Oh well, you now know the biggest drain on school funds that cause people to gasp. Not teacher salaries, or even the beauracracy (that's 2nd), but all this stupid high-tech trash."

Notes on Substitute Teaching Part I

2007-07-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

As requested by some people, here are some live accounts of my lovely job as a substitute teacher taken from different e-mails I wrote while working. I got a nice taste of just how little regard a person required to have a college degree receives at a school.

"I'm glad you were given a break. I could sure go for one too. The class I'm subbing for at the moment is really making me an ugly person. They just can't keep still and read. They're supposed to be advanced placement and all that, but they're all immature brats. I do my thing walking around talking down the rabble rousers, but it's pretty futile. Oh well, another bad report. Still, I have to keep things at an acceptable for the good kids that are doing what they're supposed to. Only for their sake do I admininister discipline because I really hate doing that stuff."

"Sorry to bring up work again, but here I am, and man, this lesson plan is terrible. Allow me to tell you "The kids should get their books and read the whole period." What shit is that?! Is there a grade at the end? No. Is there any assignment to be done? No. Is there any accountability at all? Not at all. What can I do? The whole class has books in their hand while they go on stupidly. And no one has assigned seating letting them jabber on with their friends before I have the move them myself. Two classes over 30 kids and the rest over 25.

Hold on. I'm going to have to take this sucker out. Referral!

Ah.... sweet tranquility. It's funny what a difference one student can make. It's such a pain to pull out the big guns but what's done has to be done. Fortunately, this last class is looking much better. Eh, stupid kids. Really Rita, if you ever got aquainted with kids your age or younger, you'd understand why young people get no respect at all. They're absolutely idiotic sometimes.

Now, I take a deep breath. I'm so ready for this week to be over. Waking up before sunrise again and again is taking its toll. I think I've been spoiled with previous assignments I had because today and half of yesterday were pretty tedious. Man, when was the last time I had an advance placement class? It seems like all the jobs I'm doing are the classes full of dregs. This is depressing. I'd like to tell you that these are the exception. There are a whole bunch of good kids with a future, but they're such a narrow lot. They're like endangered animals in the school world. I'm still unsure how things will be when we have a kid."

"Right now, I'm on a subbing assignment babysitting a World History class. Unfortunately, I'm having to encounter the lowest common denominator that seems to grow and grow as time passes. They all speak Spanish and there's not a blue eye to be seen. The all-star cast that I'm with today is Akram, Aldo, Mario, Marco, Perla, and Mayra. A good group of kids that have issues with basic reading comprehension.

Ah, ok, now I've settled them down. I feel like a sheep dog having to bark at the sheep so they do what they're supposed to. It's a workout sometimes. But, I couldn't imagine myself doing anything else at the moment. It's just funny to reflect sometimes."

"Subbing has now become something as routine as J.C.Penney. I know the procedures, nothing surprises me, and the days go by swimmingly. Taking on another class is like taking on another few customers. Behavior problems are like returns. A really bad kid is like an angry customer. I'm unfazed. I think the kids appreciate that. Heh, it's funny when a kid guiltily looks up when I tower above him catching him in the act of eating candy. I tell him to share with me, and all is well.

Right now, I'm in the middle of fifth period. The last period I tricked a student into logging me in. Heh, I'm so clever. Unfortunately, there isn't much amusement online. I read the paper and some sports news, gaze at a few comics, get my chuckle then it's back to the riveting Plutarch. It's hard to take as a historical document since much of it so far comes from myth. Then again, I've been doing Theseus and Romulus. The founder of Rome and the founder of Athens. It's just a hard thing to tell."

"Heh, it's funny looking at this one kid. He's a pale red head boy and the only white kid in the class, plus the only one with glasses. I just want to remark "My oh my, what are doing here?" But, that'd be inappropriate. He doesn't seem to look alienated, so that's good." -I found out later this kid was hispanic and spoke Spanish.

"Ok, had to quell a bathroom request. Ugh, these kids are really weasles sometimes."

"I get the bad feeling that today is going to be a long day. I’m in my second period right now, and none of the kids are doing their work at all. You see, being the 8th substitute they’ve had, any sense of accountability has completely been drained from them, and well, they don’t feel like doing French anymore. What’s more, they’re given a long-term group project of something they don’t seem to understand. This is what you call royally screwing the sub in a classroom quagmire. I’ve done this before in a Math class a few weeks back as you know. What I’ve learned from that experience is that it’s an impossible battle. Therefore, I’ll concede defeat and let them waste their time and be the babysitter.

Ah well, now I have the older more advanced classes and they’re much more cooperative. Still, the lesson plan was crummy and vague. They’re supposed to make some kind of lesson plans for the lower level French classes about French geography or something. I told them to look at the assignment make what they can of it, and go with it. So far, most people have been doing just that. I check on their progress ever so often. Some of them were reading Canterbury tales or American History! Heh, I actually talked books or history with them before getting them back on task. Yeah, I’m cool.

I know, I know, it’s just my job, my job, my job. How can I make this interesting to you? I really try. But, maybe there’s just no getting around it. Once something becomes an actual occupation it loses its luster in conversation. It was much more intriguing anticipating than simple recounting. Oh well."

Indulging in a little vanity

2007-07-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

You know, people will always ask how you are, or what you might be up to, but you're never given the time to explain yourself. Instead, you skirt the question and move on, sputtering off some mundane drivel that might unfairly define you in the eyes of others forever afterwards. Like most other people, I lack a convenient outlet for simply explaining my life adaquately, so like other people I write a journal or a blog to suit the purpose of answering that popular question "What's up?". When faced with an "About me:" for this blog, I wanted to merely introduce my very ordinary situation, but it ended up having too many characters. Thus, it has become my second post:

I'm a bright eyed youth embarking upon the noble profession of teaching. I love working with young people and hope to give them a brighter future like an English teacher once did for me. I was obstinate towards literature and poetry until she opened up that magical world that liberated my soul and gave me the gift of expression. Who knew Shakespeare could appeal to an apathetic teen brought up on television and videogames?

Actually, I am none of the above except that I am a person embarking upon the profession of teaching. I’m not sure how long I'll stay in it before pursuing some kind graduate or professional degree. I’m not so fond of young people, but I consider that a strength. I've had terrible teachers, especially in English, so my motivation would be to illuminate dim adolescent minds with a flicker of academic prospect. I’m not too keen on Shakespeare, at least, not for modern youths struggling with words over three syllables.

I do love learning, so that is why I teach. It really wouldn’t matter what subject I taught so long as it’s something I respect. My general humanities major allowed me to teach history or English. Knowing that history teachers in Texas are usually coaches, I chose our modern Lingua Franca, English.

To get experience in the classroom, since the classes for teaching certification offer absolutely nothing, I subbed from 2006-2007 in a nearby school district and worked for pennies teaching English at a private summer school program at the Catholic school my mother worked at. I’m not a complete novice, but I don’t have a classroom (or in the poorer schools, a cart) of my own.

Right now, I pursue a job. I’m not completely certified, so I’m probably going to be left with the teaching jobs no one wanted. My first post explains the overwhelming progress of my job pursuit.

The start of a new career

2007-07-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

I woke up early this morning to start my search for a teaching position in English. The hold on non-certified, non-disctrict-alternative-certification, should have been lifted by now according to the bureaucrat that happily dismissed me a month earlier when I sought a job. My status forces me to wait until the district goes into desperation mode. It's kind of like playing "Chicken" (that game where two cars speed towards each other until someone swerves out of the way) with the two sides usually losing.

Allow me to explain my situation. I've gotten pretty good at it after going to two job fairs and doing a few interviews. Here's how it usually goes: Right now, I'm a candidate for probationary certification, meaning I have everything done (coursework and tests) except my student teaching. I have had experience as a substitute teacher and a summer school teacher at a Catholic school. My school allows an academic year of internship in place of student teaching. However, it's upon me to find a contract with a school district willing to hire someone not completely certified. That leaves only private schools who have very few vacancies and terrible pay or bloated urban school districts who need fresh meat to tame the thugs. I've tried the private school route, and now I'm trying the thug taming route.

That morning I renewed my effort to simply get somewhere in terms of a job. I telephoned the HR office who then transferred me to the recruitment office who then transferred me to the calling center of the recruitment offices. No one answered the last transfer, so I repeated the process twice more before resigning myself to leaving a message to which I felt certain that no one would bother responding.

I certainty was confirmed. An hour passed, so I called the office again. Someone actually answered and pretended to know nothing of my previous message left. After explaining my desire to arrange an appointment with their "representative" to fill in one of their vacant English positions, I was told that they only do that with Math and Science teachers. My only option was to attend one of their job fairs at the end of the month, and to fax my resume to all the schools that needed someone.

For the moment, I peddle in yogurt. For anyone curious about these teacher shortages, most of it lies in the incompetence of these vast HR departments. They serve no one, neither the employers nor the employees. All they can do is dismiss people like me by sending us in circles on the phone and hand out pamphlets for the next job fair or their new Internet site that functions only half the time. They are one of Public School's many examples of wasted tax dollars. The actual interviewing and reference is done through individual schools, who I now inquire for the possibility of employment. Unfortunately, the principals happen to be on vacation right now.

I get an eerie feeling that this job pursuit until the very last week before school begins. I'll try all I can to get a response before then. I've faxed 8 cover letters and resumes to 8 different schools (a task that took me much longer than anticipated). I might try calling next week. In the meantime, I'll just read some books, write a bit, honing my English skills.