How to Help the Teachers

It is the issue which won't go away; indeed, we have here spoken of it several times ourselves. We are talking about, again, the way in which we measure teacher performance. In light of the cheating scandal which racked the Atlanta, Georgia schools, we now have a voluntary survey conducted by the Detroit Free Press which has concluded that 30%, or just about 1 in 3, Michigan teachers have felt pressure to cheat. A few have even admitted altering grades.

No one condones cheating. Yet that does not mean that we ought not have a certain sympathy for those of us caught in difficult, if not dire, situations. Especially when the rational argument can be made that they are being judged under circumstances over which they have little, if any, control. Educators have little control over who ends up in their classrooms. They have even less say, if any at all, in the home and personal lives of their students.

Claiming that a good teacher can teach anybody is nothing more than a flippancy. It simply ignores reality. Not everyone can learn nor is everyone willing to learn, and such obstacles are not easily overcome. Pressuring teachers, who have their particular lives and pressures to worry over, is bound to invite bending rules among the less stout of heart. Yet with our insistence on finding or developing some sort of almost scientific manner upon which to grade our instructors, methods which basically ignore the obviously non-scientific factors listed about, there seems no leeway except to call teachers on the carpet over matters they cannot affect.

There seems two ways ultimately to approach the problem. One is to back off the teachers who work in the tougher areas which will, no offense intended but said only to reflect reality, produce a talent pool of lower ability. The other, and this will seem ironic, reduce the amount of public support for education. Yes, we mean cut funding. Even further, perhaps, than it has been. Those who can learn will learn with less cash being spent on them. Those who can't or won't learn won't be helped either way.

But the trouble with each approach lies in that fact that conservatives, rightly enough, so far as it goes, want an idea about return on investment. They want to measure, as quantifiably as they can, whether the money spent is well spent, ignoring that there are areas where the ROI simply isn't going to be good no matter what. Liberals, being liberal, simply want to throw more money at the schools. They forget that continuing to do what doesn't work will not make it work, and the amount of money spent means nothing in that light.

Neither of these ideas will come to life. And the only ones who will be hurt in the meantime are the ones caught in the middle of the game.

More Alternative Education?

A local school district, Warren Consolidated to be exact, has taken up the problem of what to do about dropouts. Nothing new there, except that the dropouts they are concerned with are those leaving the Alternative High School the district supports. In the words of an administrator, “We are looking for an alternative to alternative education.”

Now, you really should not be snickering at that. It happens all the time in education: every one must be educated, willing or not, and if we can only just find the way to reach them they will become educated.

Right. The education establishment refuses to accept that some young folks simply will not be educated. That isn’t necessarily the fault of educators; indeed it’s likely not the fault of theirs in the overwhelming majority of cases. But it is pig headed to think that everyone will learn. That attitude simply forces us to keep students in the system who should not be there yet are, to the detriment of those really trying to learn and the teachers really trying to teach.

Yes, state and federal laws (think No Child Left Behind, that onerous boondoggle of W’s) compel us to such nonsense. Yet a lot of that was brought on in the long term by the education elite who promised the education of every single student. You got what you asked for, guys. Deal with it.

Unless you can find an alternative to that.

True Education Reform

Many folks, politicians, educators, and film makers even, are worried that education reform is far from done. They lament, according to an article this morning on AOL News, that the President's Race to the Top program is too little too late for some students, and that more needs to be done with early childhood education. In particular, a poll of teachers shows strong support for formal education before kindergarten. Children with very early aid do better academically in the long run.

Early education certainly makes a huge difference in the life of a child. But how formal does it have to be? We have known for eons that parents who take a role in their children's learning have a tremendous effect on their educational success. We don't need formal classroom teachers to help ensure good academics: we need parents who will take an active role in the lives of their young charges.

This whole issue reeks of a ploy by those who have a special interest in education to spread the wealth among their peers, and to create more jobs in the education arena. It further allows those of us who do not support them to be labeled as against education. Indeed, we can now be called against the poor, who have a higher rate of academic failure than the middle and upper classes.

Yet we are not. We are simply recognizing that support from home cannot be replaced by any amount of professional and formal learning. That those in poor home environments generally struggle in school is a question in truth beyond the means of any sanctioned educational system. No matter how you try, even when the kids are very young, they will not, as a rule, learn even the rudimentary bits of knowledge without a stable and concerned home life to support that effort. In fact, it is safe to say that the effects of the home life trump the efforts of the education establishment, and always will.

The issue ultimately is one of misplaced emphasis. If we want academic success we need to create a nation with stable homes and, yes, nurturing environments. Good education, like good citizenship, begins at home. It usually will not begin anywhere else, as that is where children spend, or at least should spend, the bulk of their time. As it is, all we really have is a special interest group acting for the special interest: educators seeking the creation of jobs for educators. They don't want to help kids as much as they want a jobs program funded from the public coffers.

We fail to realize that education has become a business, and that businesses usually only want what is good for them. More money and more government oversight of the classroom doesn't help those who actually need it; it only protects the teaching market for those who likely would succeed anyway. This type of hyperbole fails to serve those it purports to hold dear. Yet it does insure better cars for the classroom instructor.

Why Should We Be Shocked?

While channel surfing a few minutes ago I stumbled across another of those sordid tales we have such a plethora of these days. It involved the killing of an 18 year old high school senior who was sleeping with his teacher. When her husband arrived at home and discovered the pair, he shot and killed the youth.

The entire story is reprehensible for the start. Yet there is one aspect of the whole, if you will forgive this, wretched affair, on which I'll wager a month's wages you will never hear. It won't come from the authorities, it won't come from the general society, and it certainly will not come from the school people. It is the simple point that when we approach education from the standpoint of being nonjudgmental, we should not be shocked when despicable acts such as this occur.

We teach our teachers that nothing is eternally right or wrong. We are expected to teach our students the same thing. That is what I saw in the education classes I had to take in order to become a certified teacher. That is what I was taught, or, well, what they attempted to teach me. Being of sound mind, I laid the idea on the dustbin of rancid thought where it belongs.

It's right out of the bible of the educationists, though: Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. It says right in that haughty tome that nothing is to be seen as right or wrong for all times and all places. That's why schools preach being nonjudgmental.

So when teachers sleep with students, why are we surprised? The pedagogue and the young paramour are not, by education's own definition, doing anything wrong. Until we understand that fact and begin to appreciate the ramifications of such dismal thought which today passes as intellect, we will only condemn ourselves to more and worse news with the passing of time, as true right and wrong become dim and shadowy concepts in the mists of the past.