posted May 12, 2008
The pretty girl in the movie said "Gort, Klaatu barada nikto." Roughly translated, that meant "Dude been shot, you better go pull his cookies out of the fire." What a movie that was.
Wouldn't it be nice if each of us had our own personal, almost omnipotent, robot who could come pull tender body parts out of the wringer whenever we get in a jam? Unfortunately, that only happens in the movies and on television. Real life is a whole nuther story.
For years, nay, decades, we've allowed discipline in our schools to decline to the point that now a casual observer might presume the inmates are running the asylum. In some respects, and in some quarters, they would be correct. At what cost to the rest of our children, our teachers, and Joe Schmuckatelli taxpaying citizen?
We recently had an opinion piece posted by someone from a Detroit suburb stating, to paraphrase, that our corporal punishment policies are a major reason for the failure of our society and our schools here in Tennessee. Having a bit of experience and history in Detroit, I can remember being able to walk the streets of much of downtown at night, but that was back in the days when corporal punishment was allowed. A response to the same opinion piece attempted to support the gentleman's theory, from a lady who lives just a little southeast of Charlotte in N.C. I have a bit of experience and history with Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools too, since all three of my children attended and graduated from that system, after corporal punishment was all but abolished. I remember the day not so many years ago that the assistant principle of my son's Junior High School got the ever loving snot beat out of him by a 13-year-old hoodlum who had been expelled for being a violent little heathern, got the snot beat out of him because by law he couldn't hit back, even though he was being assaulted. And we're supposed to abide by the, obviously flawed, theories of those who don't even live here? Elvis once sang "clean up your o-o-own ba-ack yard."
Parents, children, and teachers are constantly having "new and innovative" learning systems shoved down their throats, systems that don't work, and systems for which all of us are required to pick up the tab. If they work so well why do we graduate students who can barely read, write, or cipher? If these systems are so great and wonderful, why do we have such a high dropout rate in our schools?
If the discipline policy in our schools is so outstanding why are the police called to our schools so frequently? Why do we have boys tased as had to be done just this past week?
No child left behind, now there's a fine example of a line of felgercarb. For a few federal buckaroos our school administration is willing to put the rest at risk rather than expelling those heathern children, someone's precious progeny, who don't want to be there in the first place. Japanese soldiers were well known, during times of war, for their "banzai," or suicide, charges. Perhaps we should begin referring to these federal dollars that are sent to us but wasted on superfluous fluff as Banzai Buckaroos...not to be confused with the genius hero of the silver screen, Buckaroo Banzai.
Concerned parents yank their children out of what have become government schools to either home school or send them to any number of area private schools. They pay the same amount of property taxes in order to support those government schools. However, they gladly pay for the private school education for their children in order to ensure they have a proper learning environment. Fortunately, those who can, do. Unfortunately, those who can't, can't. Personally, I would advocate for mandatory tai koocha roochie training from about the first grade on. That would take care of a lot of problems, as would throwing the heatherns out on their ears and requiring their parents to tend to them rather than the rest of us kowtowing to the threats of being sued by those parents. I would also expel any criminal, even if the crime had been committed off of school grounds, rather than having a criminal with an ankle bracelet wandering the halls of my child's school as was the case at Sequoyah this past year. It worked in the "old days."
Perhaps the parents of decent children, children who want to be in school to learn, should be suing the school system for neglecting the education of their own children instead of yanking them out of the government system. Now there's a class action waiting to happen, but some of us are built to take the hard road.
We have a lot of good teachers. We have some who aren't so pretty good and some who are downright terrible too. In the real world, the world of industry and commerce where products and services others are willing to purchase must be produced, and unlike government where the primary end product is hot air or dead trees from all of the paper used to justify jobs, under performing employees are shifted to jobs that are more suited to their abilities. If there are no jobs where an employee fits, that person is out the door to either adjust his attitude or for him to work toward gaining a set of skills for which an employer is willing to pay. Not so when we have protected employees who can shove their faulty workmanship, or students who cannot work at grade level, off onto someone else to deal with.
One day, however, those good teachers will get tired, fed up, and stand up against the status quo. They'll begin to demand that a child who cannot, or will not, work at grade level be placed where he or she should be rather than holding back the rest of the class, and the person who sent the product of their poor workmanship will be reprimanded for having done so. Why should a good teacher be required to work much harder to pick up someone else's slack? Somehow that doesn't make much sense, but neither does protecting the slacker. And for that slacker to get pay raises, equal raises, along with the rest? Whatever happened to merit. That should be a question, but I believe we all know what happened to it...it left us about the time so many began to feel a sense of entitlement.
One day parents and taxpayers will stand up against the status quo and on the side of our good teachers. They'll stand up to explain to their elected officials, and their appointed functionaries, who, exactly, works for whom and if those elected officials and functionaries don't like it they can go sit down.
Almost exactly a year ago we were being told we had a budget surplus due to a wonderful economy and it was time to re-evaluate some of the funding for our schools. As a result of receiving more money, more money was spent. Every dime of tax payer money was spent, and to what effect? We're now having to look at severe cutbacks and budget shortages in our school system. Six months after we had that humongous budget surplus, as well as one of the largest tax increases in the history of Tennessee, back in the autumn, we were told by our Department of Revenue and Finance that we were experiencing budget shortfalls, budget shortfalls they knew were going to occur and that they were prepared to deal with. Now we're faced with cutbacks, and after cutbacks have already been made we're being faced with even more to come. Where do most of those cutbacks fall? The classroom. Do we see any administrative positions being cut when our school system spends 84% of revenue in the classroom when the industry standard is over 90%? How about those positions in the Hamilton County Department of Education that are over and above what's called for according to BEP standards? Do we see any maintenance jobs, where the employment has more than tripled over the last several years while the student population and facilities have remained essentially constant, being cut? Do we see any efforts to economize such as cutting out a job recruiting seminar when there will be no new teachers hired? Have any of those administrator seminar junkets to spiffy resort areas been cut?
No. Our school administration acts like many failing companies whose first round of cutbacks is to cut their sales force and production workers. With nobody to sell or produce a product, the company continues to fail until it eventually goes fully tango uniform, toes straight up in the air.
But Kookie Thurman is just a dumb blonde and professional hairdresser, if we listen to some of her detractors.
When the Department of Education accounts for 60% of our county budget tax payers have a right to expect performance. Inattention to those seven P's is tantamount to negligence when the result is wasted tax dollars, tax dollars that have been taken from a single Mom or a little old lady who's worked all her life to have something, but who now can only watch the value of her property dwindle due to tax liability. We probably should be thanking all of our elected officials and their appointed functionaries for paying more attention to what's in our wallets than efficiency and wise use of those tax dollars, but somehow I find it difficult to do so today, Mothers' Day.
I am, however, going to burn a Marlboro that I bought with my own money, money that I earned with my own labor and without help from either Bo or Richard. But I neither ask for, nor want, assistance from them except to get out of my way. Richard keeps saying he wants me to quit so I hang around longer, while at the same time he depends on me to smoke. It's for the children, don't you know, and they're both conservatives. Just ask them and they'll tell you.
Gort, whatever happened to flash cards?
Royce E. Burrage, Jr.
Royce@OfficiallyChapped.org
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Bravo to Royce Burrage for telling it like it is. Everyone who works in a public school, or is an involved parent had to be empathetically smiling. Most of us over 40 remember public school as a place of discipline, order, and safety. There was very little truancy, tardiness, rudeness to adults, and coarse behavior on the part of students. Kids were motivated and did their schoolwork and homework, and most kids were involved in extracurricular activities. So why is it so different now, as compared to the 1950s, 60s or 70s?
First, due to mandatory attendance policies, we now must attempt to educate a huge mass of teens whose ancestors never completed school and lack the social and academic behaviors and values most of us take for granted. Although most in the past found some kind of work, many today are products of two generations of welfare and other social programs, so they never learned any responsibility or social skills. The poor, such as in Appalachia or the inner cities, were largely invisible because few went to high school. Things like showing up on time, respecting adults, or studying a few minutes at night seem alien to many in this rapidly growing subculture. The kids from these households struggle because they begin first grade years behind middle class age peers in school skills, and most never catch up. Their frustration with a strange culture can create behavior problems.
Second, the post WWII working and middle class societies had the values of the depression-era generation that valued hard work and self-reliance. Nearly everyone lived in communities where they knew the neighbors. Nearly everyone had pride in their work, their behavior, and a sense of belonging and caring for their communities, and the local high school was a reflection of those communities. There was very little divorce, crime, drugs, or other social problems among adults. Few teens were chronic behavior problems in school because 1) the misbehaviors would be viewed and reported by a community member or teacher and 2) the parents would support the teacher and the father in the home would dole out punishment that the "problem" would rarely occur again. The few teens that were determined to remain thugs were simply kicked out, with the blessing of all.
Now those dropouts cannot get industrial union jobs. The "communities" and families have broken up due to disappearance of jobs and lax social attitudes that no longer pass harsh judgment on drug use, divorce, unwed mothers, etc. The children of these parents, while not poor like the first group, arrive at school without solid adult role models and guidance. So they act out because they have not learned responsibility or discipline. Still, the schools could kick out the bad apples during the 1970s, and they did.
Last, well-meaning but incredibly naive liberal legislators got involved. Without labor-type jobs to absorb a lot of teen energy, crime on the streets became a terrible fear. It was decided that it is better for teen malcontents to be in the schools than on the streets committing crimes. Strange laws were enacted that made it became "OK" to sue schools if a kid did not pass, or if a teacher said something that "hurt their feelings," or if the vice principle dared hit back after being struck first by a 6 foot, 200 pound teen. Or even if their precious child's poor driving caused a traffic accident on the way to a fast food joint during lunch (thus no more going home for lunch).
Teaching is much, much harder now than it was in the 1950s. We no longer teach strictly the motivated and disciplined. Yet we are expected to graduate 100% with 100% test scores by 2014 according to NCLB. Last, there are very, very few bad teachers in the public school systems. The job is too demanding. The real rewards of teaching are realized from hard work, organization, and caring for kids. Poor teachers who lack these skills simply make their own lives more miserable and quit. What most people think of as "bad" teachers today are more likely teachers who are stressed from the demands of the job and fail to appeal to someone's sense of charm or "niceness." Others think teachers are "bad" because those teachers dare discipline their undisciplined children.
Gary Furman
Teacher
Rossville
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