{sigh} I see New Jersey has mandated another social work program in its schools. We’re told that, in a law containing eighteen pages of detailed orders, the state’s legislators have instructed its public schools that they must put children through classes on how to “tell” rather than “tattle” (uh huh…), have instituted a system through which any child can call the police and claim any other child has been bullying someone, and required that special antibullying staff be put in place.
And therein lies our problem. Teachers are not teachers anymore. They’re social workers.
Last week a young woman, evidently middle-class or even affluent, clearly neither disadvantaged nor stupid, came up to me after class. Diffidently, she begged to ask a question. Then she opened the syllabus, pointed to a word in it, and said, “I’ve looked this up in several places and tried the best I can to figure it out. But I still don’t understand what this word means.”
The word was urbanization.
Think of that.
A graduate of fourteen years of schooling, preschool through twelfth grade, does not know what urban means and cannot extrapolate from that word what might be meant by urbanization.
That’s right: another victim of Arizona’s bottom-ranking school system. But, I would suggest, not just of my state’s ridiculously underfunded and underqualitied schools, but of a nationwide conversion of our public schools from institutions of learning to institutions of social work. Teachers are being asked to do everything but teach their subjects, and then when the kids don’t learn subject matter, it must be all the teachers’ fault.
Now, I’m not trying to say that schools shouldn’t be trying to get a grip on bullying and violence. They certainly should. I was the victim of constant harassment and bullying between the second grade and the sixth grade, when my parents finally left Arabia and came home to the States. It caused me to hate school so intensely that to this day I cannot bear to walk into a grade-school classroom—the characteristic odor of a lower-grade classroom makes my skin crawl.
That notwithstanding, pressure to conform is part of the socialization of young primates, including humans. To survive, social creatures have to learn the pecking order and obey it. Those who are “different” get beat up until they either die or give up and go with the flow. Obviously, that’s a cruel way to teach the lesson that you have to go along to get along; but for some of us it’s the only way.
This is why we have adults: to temper the cruelty. Instead of micromanaging school programs and classrooms, the legislators would have done better to give school administrators, teachers, and the larger society the tools to handle the prevailing brutality. These tools once were part of their repertoire but are no longer options:
• Allow school administrators to expel disruptive students, without having to jump through hoops to do so and without having to bend over backwards to make exceptions for students’ socioeconomic status or any other status.
• Fail students who are not performing.
• Reinstate strict dress codes.
• Teach academics in school, not social skills.
• Require, in all states, that teachers have degrees in their subject matter, not in education.
• Allow teachers to teach their subject matter, rather than forcing them to teach, lockstep, to standardized tests.
• Provide vocational training programs for students whose skills lie in nonacademic areas.
• Create jobs for people who do not have high school diplomas—bring back the gas station attendant, if need be, and revive our manufacturing industries so people who aren’t suited for higher education can get decently paying jobs.
But of course, this would require the leadership of our country to create jobs. Real jobs. Blue-collar jobs. And pay something more than Third-World wages.
Oh well.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, but I think that teachers also need to be good at teaching and knowing when to look for problems that don’t involve academics (and knowing either where to help the child get help or knowing how they can help). I think that a lot of teachers are not suited to teaching and are absolutely incompetent.
I’ve slipped through pretty much every crack that a middle class child can slip through in school because I was intelligent and not a problem child, so no one took any second looks at me. I understand that it’s very difficult for teachers, but it’s harder for the child who doesn’t comprehend the actual problems or even know how to talk to anyone.
Telling a child to socialize is rather pointless, in my opinion. As is acting like religion prevents all ills in morals. But I’m rather embittered towards school as it is.
And I’ve got a cold, so forgive any issues. My head feels all nose, to borrow from Catullus in a different context.
@ Kerry: Well, that’s very much the issue, IMHO. Teachers are so preoccupied trying to cope with problem children who should have been expelled and trying to provide social work programs and deal with vast bureaucracies that they have no time or energy left to actually teach normal and bright children.
And you are exactly right: even in the fancy private school my son attended, we encountered one teacher who should not have been around small children. The public schools have their share, too. There’s a reason some teachers seem unsuited for the classroom. It’s an extremely difficult job. It’s grossly underpaid. And it makes you a target for abuse from all directions — from students, from parents, and from every passing opportunistic politician and every armchair genius who thinks he knows what he’s talking about. The truth is, only a saint can do it well.
And we seem to be even shorter on saints these days than we usually are.
What Kerry said. The NEA is the issue,
The schools just push the weak ones into the next grade.
Let’s see, is a teacher an instructor?
I was never a teacher but I was an Instructor when I was in the NAVY.
I told them what I was going to tell them.
Then I told them.
Then I told them what I told them.
Seems simple to me.
If they flunked out that was not my problem.
They got reassigned somewhere.
Back to this ‘no child left behind’ issue.
Remember Forrest Gump?
Creating jobs?
Leave us small business people alone.
Teachers, put your foot down and tell your principals what you need.
You won’t because your NEA union is going to punish you.
I have two cousins in NH who are teachers, they are liberal and pro union as when they retire they will get 85% of their salary.
They both teach english.
Community colleges vs. a university.
I went to Regis in Denver a University and they made me take a test before I got signed up and they took my money.
On the other paw the local Community College signed up anyone that could write a check.
I am against any state funded community college as the graduation rate is less than 5% graduate.