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.

Adobe Walls and Teaching History

How can educators make history boring?  A better question is why they would make it boring.  You would think that  someone who chooses to make a career of teaching history would have a passion for the subject and make it interesting for their students.  But that's generally not the case.  I had three years of history in Jr. High, three in high school, and 12 hours or four semesters of history in college.  Except for coach Bennett in seventh grade Texas history, I can't name one of my history teachers.  And coach Bennett was not a good history teacher, but he was a fun teacher.  And Texas history is interesting if you take it upon yourself to learn about it.

When I was in elementary school in Gruver in the Texas panhandle, my scout group went to Adobe Walls.  The scout leaders worked with the school to get us some background on Adobe Walls.  We were told it was the oldest adobe house in Texas.  So, that was kind of interesting.  We went out and looked and collected all kinds of old junk.  I came home with a cigar box (remember those?) full of rusty square nails and an old bedspring.  There was the remains of an adobe house, and spots that we could see where other buildings had once stood.  Interesting, but fairly quickly forgotten.

Then in about 1987, I read Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.   At one point in the novel, Gus and Lorena stay in an abandoned building at Adobe Walls on the banks of the Canadian River.  They play cards using buttons from soldier's coats as poker chips.  Gus tells Lorena that it had been the site of a great battle between Comanche warriors and Kit Carson's troops.  Since I knew that much of the novel was based on real events in Texas history, I decided to do some research.

Adobe Walls was actually the site of one of the first and most important trading posts on the old Sante Fe trail.  William Bent and Ceran St. Verain built a couple of adobe buildings, but mostly traded from tents.  They originally attempted to trade with the Kiowa and Comanche that roamed the area.  The Comanche and Kiowa were not willing trading partners though.  They were much more interested in taking what they wanted by force.  So Bent and St. Verain improved and fortified their settlement to trade with settlers migrating west on the Santa Fe trail.  Even with the fortifications, raiding Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache warriors made life so uncomfortable that the trading post was abandoned.  

In 1865, Kit Carson and his 335 troops took refuge in the abandoned buildings and held off an attack by an estimated 3,000 Kiowa and Comanche warriors.  Carson's troops suffered less than 10 casualties while killing or wounding several hundred Indians.  More recent historians have lowered the number of the warriors involved and killed or wounded.  As one historian said, if 3,000 Comanches ever followed a single leader on the warpath, they would have conquered all America, Mexico, and Canada.  So, I guess typical of Texans, the events were exaggerated, and probably greatly exaggerated.  Still a great story though.

About ten years later, an even more famous battle was fought at the site.  A group of buffalo hunters, skinners, and hunters, including soon-to-be famous lawman, Bat Masterson, used the site as a campsite during their travel.  Before sunrise, the hunters were awakened by a cracking roof timber.  While the buffalo hunters were repairing the ceiling, a group of about 700 Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes led by Quanah Parker attacked.  The hunters took shelter in the old adobe building and held off the attackers with their long-range buffalo guns for a full day.  One hunter, Billy Dixon, took a shot at one brave from almost a mile away.  And hit him.  Accounts differ as to who the brave was and whether he was killed.  But he was hit with Dixon's amazing shot.  And shortly afterward, the Indians retreated.

But we were taught that it was an old adobe house.

We received Raelynn's social studies (they choose not to teach history in middle school in Colorado) lesson plan a few weeks ago.  One of their planned lessons was "the Constitution and current events."  Wow, with the debate on health care going on at the time, this would be a perfect opportunity to show what amazing forethought was involved in the creation of our Constitution.  With the progressive mindset of many of our teachers, Cathy decided that this class would be very interesting to sit in on.  So, what was the focus of this very interesting class?  Mobiles.  You know, like you would hang above a crib.  Or maybe like you would make in kindergarten or first grade.  Did I mention that this was an eighth grade class?  The perfect opportunity to teach about what may be the most important and most expensive piece of legislation of our lifetime and its impact on their future.  And how our founding fathers felt about our government's role in our everyday life compared to the current administration's view.  And they got out the scissors, construction paper, paste, and yarn and made a mobile!

It has to be part of a plan.  No one could unintentionally make the past so irrelevant, could they? 

                  Read A Patriot's History of the United States