Maybe It Was a Bad Idea to Begin With

An interesting discussion of the state of education appeared in the New York Times.  

I’ve been a day sub and a long-term sub.  I’ve taught in a federally funded Title 1 program.  I taught in a public school, then a private school, and again in a public school.  All together, I dedicated more than 35 years to continually push back the frontiers of ignorance.

I’ve seen numerous attempts at educational reform – writing labs, performance based education, longer class periods, shorter class periods, brain based learning, visual learning, and a whole slue of other attempts at pushing back those frontiers, attempts at making student learn.

Sometimes reforms work.  Other times they don’t.  They might work for some students and not for others.  Sometimes large numbers of students are affected, and sometimes students still fall between the cracks of the system no matter how laudable the reasons for the reforms.

And, sometimes, the reason change doesn't work is because it was a bad idea in the first place.

I certainly don’t have the answer to the nation’s education woes.  No one really does.  If they say they do, they’re selling you a bill of goods.

What works in one school district doesn’t always work for a district in the neighboring county.  What works for one teacher doesn’t always work for the teacher in the next classroom.

I considered myself to be a fair, but strict, teacher.  I referred to a teacher down the hall from me as the “Mother Earth Goddess” of the high school. Students who liked a stringent, take-no-excuses approach tended to do well with me as their teacher, and students who liked a touchy feely approach tended to do well with her.   When touchy feely students were in my classes, they tended to be, well, not as successful. We always had a running joke about scheduling that if we could ever figure out a way to pair up students based on the type of teacher with whom they would do best, we could make a lot more money being consultants.

We have come to a point in this country where we think that the test scores are the be all and end all of education.  Yes, test scores, are a measure of how we are doing, but it is only one measure.  And, frankly, it is a rather unimportant measure.  Does it really matter where we rank in reading and math compared to other nations?  Why?

When we go to the doctor, we don’t ask him or her what grades they received in med school.  We’re sick, and we just want to get well.  When our sink is backed up, and we’ve depleted the store of every kind of liquid drain opener, we call the plumber. We don’t ask where he trained or what kind of grades he received. We just want the sink to stop overflowing. 

It might matter how a person is inclined, whether they are geared to more academic or technical pursuits, but, really, does it matter what grades they receive in school or how they do on tests?  What matters is the ability to do their jobs proficiently and correctly.

My 35 years in education taught me some things about student success.   Parental involvement in their children’s progress is important.  Students’ involvement in other activities in a school is important.  Community support for a district and its teachers is important.  Still, one thing seems to always be forgotten when discussing school improvement – the role of the teacher’s desire to affect change.

The most effective changes in education always start from the bottom up rather than top down. When a superintendent or principal comes up with a program, or when, God forbid, state or federal officials come up with an idea, selling it to all teachers and getting them to buy into it, well, simply, that isn’t very effective.

But, when one teacher tries something in the classroom and it works, another teacher sees it and asks, "Hey can you show me what you're doing and how to do it?" Then another teacher, then another, and it spreads through a department and maybe a school. Then another teacher tries a variation and it spreads.  We teachers tend to talk to each other about what is working in our classrooms and what isn’t.  We learn from each other.  We really do want our students to learn and succeed in life.

What is needed is the ability for teachers to explore and, yes, experiment, with new methods and ideas in their individual classrooms. Then, when something works, keep it going.  If we try something and it doesn’t work, we won’t keep doing it.  And if it stops working, we’ll try something else.

WHAT I WANT IN A NEW POPE

In the Kurt Vonnegut novel “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” the title character is asked to baptize a set of twins.   He is not necessarily a religious man, much less a minister, but he agrees and at the baptismal ceremony he sprinkles some water on the children and says:

 “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

Kindness is the preeminent quality I want to see in a new Pope.

When I taught English literature, one of the pieces I had students read was Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.  Chaucer had little patience for some of the Church practices of his day: the selling of indulgences, the rich living of some Church leaders.  Still, he admired someone in the Church like the lowly Parson.  Chaucer’s Parson traveled in a wide parish, gave of himself, and tried to practice what he preached.  The lowly Parson had a standard:

"If gold rusts, what hope is there for iron?"
For if a priest is bad, who we should trust
No wonder that the common man will rust.
Now here's an image should make a priest weep
A shit covered shepherd and a clean sheep;
For by his cleanliness a priest should give
To his sheep, a model of how to live.

The Parson was a simple man, and Chaucer’s take on this man of God was simple:

Nowhere on earth is there a priest more fine.
He looked for no great pomp or reverence,
Nor was his conscience primed to seek offence,
For he taught the law of Christ and his twelve
He taught, but first he followed it himself.

I want to see the Parson in a new Pope.

The Church has numerous problems.  The abuse scandals in the United States and elsewhere are still seen by many as unaddressed.   The over one billion Catholics increasingly see Rome as out of touch and distant, lost in its opulence and its past. 

Still, the Church does many good things.  Among the first to provide relief services for Katrina was Catholic Social Services.   Catholic Social Services was on the frontline in the aftermath of 9/11.  Pope Benedict reaffirmed the historical social teachings of the Church numerous times.  He also called for the recognition that worker groups and unions play a necessary and vital role in the global economy.

The new Pope needs to continue the social doctrine of the New Testament.

When Benedict resigned, I jokingly said that I wanted to be the Pope.  To be honest, I thought about it seriously when I was in the seminary, knowing full well that my chances were nil.  God, however, had other plans for me.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I guess He wanted me to get married, have a son and daughter, and teach English.

The new Pope, by his leadership and example, has to help Catholics realize their own vocations.  I think he has to help women resume the same vital role they played in the early Church, even as ministers.  He has to see that allowing them to be married will only enhance the role of priests. 

 

The new Pope can still wear that cool hat and those red shoes.  But, he must also remember that he is filling the shoes of the fisherman.

Entertainment News

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One of my former students wrote this about some recent celebrity news in a Facebook status:

Oh I'm sorry, you were completely mistaken when you assumed I gave any fucks about Kim and Kanye's baby

Some of the comments left in the thread discussed what the issue of a Kardashian/West coupling might actually look like.  Some of the other comments mentioned West’s poor rap stylings.

I pretty much feel the same way about any celebrity news.  Our nation has become obsessed with the lives of people we will never meet let alone get to know as friends or neighbors.  Read any of the grocery store tabloids.  Watch any of the half-hour “entertainment news” shows after the evening news.  Someone is pregnant again, even though she’s not married, and nobody knows who she’s been seeing lately.  Someone else has been arrested on the latest of a bazillion drunk driving incidents.  Two people are getting married after they’ve been dating for about two weeks.  Two other people are getting divorced after being married for only four months.

Is it any wonder that teenage unwed mothers are more common in schools?  Or that the national divorce rate is 40-50 percent?  We spend far too much time watching and reading stories about who’s pregnant and who’s breaking up.  Granted there are not that many entertainment couples who are still on their first marriage and have been together for a long time, but when they come along maybe the tabloid and fake news shows should be spending time celebrating the milestones in their lives such as births and anniversaries. They should certainly spend less time covering human failures.
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And what’s the deal with the American fascination with British royalty?  We kicked King George’s ass over two hundred years ago.   Some paparazzi takes a picture of Kate Middleton sunbathing topless and it takes up half of a nightly news broadcast. 

All right.  Prince William’s wife is a babe, and any teenage boy would drool over her as much as they once drooled over the old Farrah Fawcett posters.  They'd hide the digital copies on a thumb drive so their moms won't find them, or print them out and stick them under their mattress with their copies of Penthouse and Playboy. And any red blooded American man wouldn’t mind seeing her naked either. 

But the royal family is upset, and Americans are pelted nightly for a week with the broadcast news, both the national and entertainment variety, like we should all be outraged.   Why is this stuff important?

Prince William should have released one statement that would have stopped all the coverage and probably the hounding paparazzi.   It would read something like:

To the press.  Okay you have some nude photos of my wife.  Go ahead and publish them you perverted twits.  Masturbate to them all you want.  Know this though.  I am married to that sweet hotness and you’re not.  While you're wasting your sperm on pictures, I get to see her that way everyday, and I get to get up in all that hotness whenever I want.  And you don’t, suckers.  It’s good to be the King.