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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

"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.