What About Education?

I try really hard to give teachers the benefit of the doubt.  I had some excellent teachers when I was in school.  I originally went to college to become a teacher and some of my classmates were dedicated to educating children.  My aunt has been an elementary school teacher for longer than she would want me to write.  I know she is an excellent teacher.  My high school freshman daughter has had a couple of good teachers in the public school system.  Unfortunately she has had only a couple of good teachers.  Interestingly, especially to those who claim that we will only attract quality teachers by paying them more, she had great teachers in her first four grades of private school.  She did not attend an exclusive, prestigious, expensive prep school either.  She attended a small private school in a church in Texas.  Those teachers teach because they have a calling.  They are paid a fraction of the salary of the average first year public school teacher, with no health insurance or pension plan.  They teach because they know it's important.

Because of my background, I was a bit concerned about my daughter's education in a church sponsored school staffed by teachers who were not all certified by the state.  She started kindergarten at the age of four, because she had mastered the pre-school curriculum.  Her kindergarten class finished the kindergarten curriculum at the Christmas break, so her teacher was free to pursue advanced work for the students in the second half of the year.  Her education continued at that pace through the fourth grade, when we moved to Arizona and enrolled her in the public school.

The first change we noticed was the lack of classroom management.  Barely controlled chaos would be the best description for both fourth grade classes in her school.  For a child that's easily distracted, and what pre-teen or teen isn't easily distracted, a chaotic classroom is not the environment most conducive to learning.  And my daughter did not learn anything in her short time in Arizona's public school system.  We moved to Colorado.  One of the first things we did before accepting the relocation was check on the schools in the area.  The school in town did not have a good reputation, or good standardized test scores.  But there was a small school district only fifteen miles away.  The school had an excellent reputation and more importantly great standardized test scores.  In Colorado, parents can enroll their child in any Colorado public school with room to accept them.  The school we chose was very selective.  They gave my daughter a test to assess her skill level in reading, writing, and math.  She scored very well in reading - four grade levels above her actual grade.  She scored one grade ahead in writing and on level in math.  We quickly learned that the school was very good at teaching the test.  After moving again, we learned that teaching the test is at least teaching something.

Her education seemed to slow while learning the Colorado standardized tests at the previous school.  After moving, her education has consisted of whatever we can get her interested in at home, or whatever her flighty teenage mind takes an interest in today.  With only a couple (literally two that I can think of in her almost three years at this school) of exceptions, her teachers have absolutely no interest in the education of their students.  They are concerned about test scores, and sadly enough are such poor teachers that they are actually happy when 33% of their students test proficient in math!  They are ecstatic with reading scores in the 60% proficient range.   They actually brag about these scores!  Even sadder, they can brag about these scores because they are higher than the state average.  When my wife worked as a substitute teacher's aid, one of the grade school teachers told her that it didn't matter if a student was a good or poor reader in first grade.  By third grade they are all relatively equal.  We now realize that it's not because the poor readers catch up, it's because the good readers slip back to the poor reading level.  Oh, by the way, next time you are appalled at the horrible spelling in the comment section of your favorite blogs or news sites, listen in to your first grader's reading class.  My wife learned that, at least in our school system, vowels are not important.  They teach phonics without vowels!  "How do you spell star, Johnny?"  "S-T-R."  "Tht's rt, Jnny, gd jb."  No wonder our kids' reading scores are falling like a rock, excuse me, lk a rk.   President Bush's No Child Left Behind has been executed as No Child Gets Ahead.

I wrote last year about my daughter's 8th grade Social Studies class making a mobile to learn about the Constitution and current events, while the health care takeover was in the news.  I wrote a couple of months ago about how history is no longer being taught.  Now, let me tell you about her English class.  Think back to your freshman year of high school.  I know I read The Scarlet Letter, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Romeo and Juliet. So far, with the exception of a couple of short stories, she has read nothing by an author I have heard of.  And I formerly owned a book store and still read constantly, so it's not like I haven't heard of a couple of respected authors.

While doing some office work the other day, I heard my daughter tell my wife that they watched a biography of Shakespeare because they are going to study Romeo and Juliet in the last few weeks of school.  My heart jumped!  They are actually going to challenge the students!  And they are going to learn a little history about Shakespeare first!  My heart almost stopped after hearing her next sentence.  "Did you know that Shakespeare was bi?"  Sure enough, the A&E biography the students watched suggested that Shakespeare's letters to his patron indicated that the two had a homosexual affair.  Reviews of the biography on Amazon, suggest the video would be a good starting point for a discussion on the subject.  Well, since the video was chosen because it fit perfectly into the 50 minute time slot for the class, there was no further discussion.   Would a discussion about the role of the patron of the arts in Shakespeare's time be relevant?  Like maybe that Shakespeare's over the top flattery of the man was an attempt to gain his financial support.  You know, he was "kissing up" to a rich man for money.  How will future biographers interpret "kissing up?"  Then you can link that conversation to the change in hand gestures.  Biting the thumb led to a sword fighting death in Romeo and Juliet.  Pretty dumb, huh?  Kind of like the display of a specific finger in traffic can lead to a fatal episode of road rage today.  Why wouldn't a professional teacher make the minimal effort necessary to create just a little interest in the subject?

A post I read last week about Wisconsin's teacher's union stated that too many teachers today are nothing more than degree-carrying babysitters with high paying jobs with excellent benefits and lots of time off.  Why else would the Wisconsin teachers fake sick days in order to protest Gov. Walker's new policy?  They were more concerned about their union's right to collectively bargain for benefits and automatically collect their dues than they were concerned about doing their job.  Doing the job that used to be a high calling - educating the children.  Why would a teacher's union in California draft a statement in support of a convicted cop killer in New Jersey?  The statement actually calls the killer an "imprisoned journalist."  A story I just read says one organization states the importance of teaching Marxism in elementary school.  That's another topic I wrote about last year, albeit kind of tongue in cheek.   I didn't realize that it was actually part of the plan!  Do teachers actually believe in these policies?

One comment on the Wisconsin story compared teachers to Muslims.  The more rational thinkers among us have argued that the United States is not at war with Muslims.  A small percentage of Muslims are radicals that are trying to kill as many infidels as they can.  The great majority of them are peaceful and do not agree with the practices of the radicals.  Well, the argument has become, "why aren't the non-radicals speaking out against their deadly brothers?"  Like I said at the beginning of this post, I try very hard to give teachers the benefit of the doubt.  If not the majority, at least a very large number, of teachers do view education as a calling, not just a good babysitting job.  Those teachers had better start standing up to their deadly, radical brethren with an anti-American agenda.