Every parent is, and should be, a teacher. Anyone out here in the real world, the world of profits and losses and returns on investment, who works with others, particularly in supervisory or lead roles, most certainly is, like it or not and whether we're called one or not, a teacher. Anyone who's developed skills, especially craft skills, is a teacher and mentor to the young whippers coming up and into the field… as is anyone charged with the responsibility of building and installing some el spiffo system, then training operators how to use it.
We're all teachers.
Some are more effective than others and some lessons are more obvious than others, but the fact remains... we're all teachers.
We keep hearing that teachers shouldn't be held accountable for students' failure, that unlike industry they're stuck with the raw material they're given, there's no way to implement a quality control system, they don't have 24/7/365.25 influence over the children they're charged with educating, parents aren't as involved as they should be, class sizes are too large, books aren't adequate, classroom facilities either, it's too hot, or cold, little Johnny broke an eyelash, or Janie a fingernail, and my personal faves… if we only had more money (and got paid more) we could do the job better, and “educators” are the only ones truly qualified to sit on the School Board.
To quote the great French philosopher Pepe Le Pew, “au contraire mes amis.”
To begin, perhaps I ought to quote one of my favorite TeacherBabes; “Most teachers are whimps.” Those are her words, not mine… and a significant statement by a pretty, blue eyed blonde who regularly takes knives away from studii. It's easy to understand the challenges and frustrations of working within a huge bureaucracy. I've known a lot of teachers over the years, spent a good bit of time in classrooms as an observer, worked with quite a few former teachers, and even though agreeing wholeheartedly with W.C. Fields' statement that anyone who hates kids and dogs can't be all bad… have worked, dragged kicking and screaming mind you, with quite a number of little heatherns over the years in school, extracurricular activities including science fairs, Scouts, Odyssey of the Mind, and other activities in addition to employing several high school and college kids over the past 35 or so years as a business owner.
Let's begin with the School Board. Every organization must have a chain of command or there'll be total chaos. The School Board, or Board of Education, is the governing body elected by those who own shares of the entity, the taxpayer owned school system, and is responsible for setting its goals, providing guidance for attaining those goals, approving budgets, approving capital expenditures, and ensuring taxpayer dollars are utilized in the most efficient manner possible. Members of the School Board have a fiduciary responsibility toward taxpayers, school system employees, and studii.
Any governing board composed primarily of members, or former members, of the entity itself is nothing more than practicing organizational incest, isn't it. We already have teachers' unions negotiating with administrators who profit from those negotiations, at taxpayer expense. All we do by electing former members of the school system to the governing body is add another layer of incest. Ludicrosity aside, anyone claiming otherwise does nothing more than demonstrate their naiveté of the real world, the world of profits and losses and returns on investment.
Of all the teachers and former teachers I've known and worked with over the years, those who wear them wouldn't even need to remove shoes and socks to count the number of “whimps.” I'm often reminded of a TeacherBabe relating an incident in which she was sending a particularly unruly heathern child to the office, again… a 14 year old boy, who stood a head taller, got in her face, like, nose-to-nose, and repeated over and over “You do and I'll kick your (F-Bomb) [tush].” She was kind of cute as she further related “As I handed him the referral slip I asked myself 'I wonder if this is going to hurt'.” It takes a bit of courage to do that. And after being told the boy would be held back not just for his behavior but his classroom performance? The boy, someone's precious progeny, was promoted to the next grade three days later, without even being suspended, much less expelled, from school... promoted from middle school to high school, to become someone else's problem. There are other examples... many, many others.
A classroom teacher is frowned upon for sending her charges “to the office” because they won’t behave in class. At least one I know was told by former Hamilton County Director of Schools, Dr. Jesse Register, that if she couldn't control her classroom perhaps she'd chosen the wrong profession. Apparently this isn't unusual. It's all about the numbers, don't you know. In leadership circles this is known as having all the responsibility with no authority to effect changes necessary to accomplish the organization's mission.
Add to this threats of losing a job, when jobs are difficult to come by and their income is necessary, or being transferred to a less than desirable school, perhaps a demotion, and more, is it any wonder some teachers exhibit behaviors similar to those of spousal abuse victims? Is staying in a job because he needs the income, no matter how abusive the environment, anything but bondage?
How is a child who wants to learn supposed accomplish that feat without discipline in a classroom, with constant disruptions and distractions? How is a teacher supposed to teach when he or she spends the majority of class time dealing with disruptions he isn't allowed to refer on to higher authorities? Isn't this tantamount to child and teacher abuse?
We hear complaints from some teachers they don't have 24/7/365.25 influence over studii. So? When allowed to maintain discipline and order in their classrooms so they can truly be educators, teachers can be an enormous influence, however limited their time may be. Scout Masters and adult leadership influence their charges, coaches too, as do preachers,
Sunday school teachers, and any number of adult authority figures with limited, and most assuredly not 24/7/365.25 contact, in a child's life. Lack of administration support for teachers in maintaining classroom discipline so they can actually teach those who want to be there not only demeans that teacher and her authority in the eyes of studii, but discourages some from giving their best, ultimately causing them to leave the field. Teacher abuse again. Child abuse again.
Why do we allow criminals, thieves and drug dealers and violent offenders, to attend school with our children and grandchildren? Is this anything less than child abuse?
So-called educators complain they have no control over the raw material they're given when charged with providing our children the tools to become productive members of society. Statements are commonly made that industry has control over their raw material and for this reason there's no true analog between education and industry. Naiveté again.
A corollary to Murphy's Law, anything that can go wrong will, states “interchangeable parts, won't.” Now it's all fine and dandy to state that's an easy problem to solve, just send the parts back for replacement because, after all, business owners and managers have complete control over their raw materials. How's that work when the parts have a two week lead time and the project must ship in four days? How's that work if I'm building humongous power transformers and 127 tons, versus tonnes, of silicon steel is the wrong alloy or dimensions? Or we're drawing wire and varnish coating it for insulation, and the varnish foams so there are too many voids in the coating or there are too few solids so the breakdown voltage between turns is too low. Nikola Tesla designed our modern day turbine engine but it took metallurgists 50 years to provide metals and bearings that could withstand the temperatures, pressures, and other forces. How do we overcome these challenges? Testing, quality control, product development.
Teachers dislike being tested. Testing is a fact of life. We're all tested every day in many ways and it's the basis of any quality assurance/control program. Anyone in the real world whose work involves life safety issues appreciates their work being tested. Doesn't a teacher's work have a significant affect on our children's lives? Going back to that responsibility with no authority deal, it's nothing but abusive to expect someone's career prospects to be determined by factors over which they have absolutely no control. Where's the teachers' union?
Teachers complain they're expected to perform but have no system of quality control, no control over the raw material they're sent. Nay nay, mis amigos. This may be true of first year studii, but after that what's the excuse? It's fairly easy to measure a student's loss of learned information over a summer break. What's wrong with testing students immediately at the beginning of a school year, then again a week or so later to determine if he or she actually attained the learning levels mandated for the previous grade? If not, send 'em back to the previous year's teacher who didn't perform adequately. Make it that previous teacher's responsibility to bring the student up to grade level or send the student back to repeat the grade if his failure is significant enough. Do away with social promotions and promotions to pass a problem on to someone else. Where's the teachers' union on the issue of protecting teachers from being required to keep a student in class who does not meet the minimum requirements? Isn't this merely another teacher abuse? And child abuse for not ensuring he's truly met grade level requirements?
What's the excuse for a student being passed out of the third grade without being able to read at grade level, even if he may be 27 years old? Why do we graduate studii from high school, of whom 40% to 70% require remedial instruction before meeting the minimum entrance requirements for college? Isn't this nothing more than child abuse?
Money, honey… sorry, it reminds me of a song.
We keep hearing that mo' money will cure all the problems and the teachers' trade unions are all over that. Our nation, these United States of America, the greatest nation ever to grace the face of Planet Terra, spends more on so-called education systems and programs than any other in the world. Those systems spending the most taxpayer dollars are the worst, proportional to the amounts per student expended. That's provable. But still we hear calls for mo' money. Why? So they can further abuse our children and grandchildren while raping our collective wallets?
All the while school system administrators, suppliers, contractors, and other peripheral “education system” feeders tell us 90 whatever percent of our tax dollars, it's for the children don't you know, is going into the classroom when, in fact, they're all fighting over who can get more for themselves and less money actually goes to the classroom. That's provable, and it wouldn't be a stretch to name what it often becomes… administrative incompetence and malfeasance.
Our system of education has been run by “educators” for a while now, several decades, and has gone nowhere but down hill. Perhaps it's time to go back to basics, apply sound business operating principles, and truly tend to educating our children instead of attempting to emulate a Dodge Ram pickup:
Guts! Glory! Recalls!
My goodness. Everybody likes at least a little experimentation. Add stolen innocence, child abuse, employee abuse, a little bondage, organizational incest, misconduct toward others, financial rape, the seductive effect of power and we have the beginnings of a pretty good novel. I know exactly what we could use for the title too.
50 Shades of Education.
Royce Burrage, Jr.
Royce@Officially Chapped.org
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Mr. Royce Burrage, Jr. has some good points in his recent rant. Unfortunately, he wandered around in a not always logical fashion and did not really "make" any of them.
I don't think anyone is claiming that simply dumping more money into the schools will solve the problems. What is true and should be obvious is that the problems will not be solved without adequate funding.
He mentioned the problems related to the "social pass." I have had students passed over my objection, but not in Hamilton County. The biggest question is what do we do with those students?
He mentioned Dr. Jessie Register. Fortunately, he is no longer one of the problems in Hamilton county.
John L. Odom
Retired Teacher