Something Funny, and then there's the rest of it

"My first, and arguably seminal experience of music was at Hull’s Craven Primary School in the nascent ukulele orchestra."

This sentence, with which a friend opens his personal statement of application to study music at St. John's College, Cambridge, has had me in stitches for about a week now. To find this as funny as I do, you may need to know that he grew up to become a double-bass virtuoso. Or you may not. The mere idea of an entire orchestra comprised entirely of tiny children flailing away on ukeleles, the use of the word "nascent" to describe them, the name of the school being Craven (it's in Hull, England)--with all the unappetizing associations that word brings with it--and his use of "seminal" to describe the experience: all this might just be enough to crack you up, too. I hope so!

It certainly came in handy for me this week, when the Red Sox were pummelled into something the Yankees like to think was submission, in the 11th inning on Thursday night. Last night, as the Bronx Bullies were being mildly trounced by the Marlins, one of their fans held up a big sign saying "Bambino Bucky Boone" just to remind everyone who doesn't need reminding (nobody else cares) of that horrid 11th inning. This kind of behavior (egregious, unsportsmanlike gloating) demonstrates why we hate the Yankees, here at WriteOutLoud.

In other news, I've been silent, here, a long time because 1) I've gone back to work (sort of--a long-term substitute high school teaching gig, same school as last year, and 2) I'm so upset by the predicament our schools are in. EVERYBODY's wrong! Not just the administrators, not just the parents--the teachers, too. I've long tried to persuade myself--OK, clung to the illusion--that teachers are long-suffering, much-abused, undervalued and misunderstood. Many are. But I'm now forced to admit that many are incompetent, irresponsible, and dishonest. I've been trying to draw lines between the Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Ugly, but the lines keep blurring.

Example: I'm writing on the board in front of 38 11th-graders. A surly but bright-seeming boy in the back yells, "HEY, I CAN'T READ THAT!" I step back, check my penmanship, the darkness of the marker, the size of my script, and they all look fine, so I ask him why not? "I CAN'T READ CURSIVE!" He didn't just get here last week from Mexico, like some of his classmates; he's been "educated" all his life in this country. He has no diagnosed learning disabilities. I asked how many others couldn't read cursive, and EIGHT KIDS raised their hands. They've all slipped through the cracks, somehow.

Here's one now: in the lunchroom, the computer literacy teacher and I discussed a student we have in common. I'd noticed he was using the hunt-and-peck method on the computer keyboard, and asked her whether she teaches touch-typing. "I do," she replied, "and one other computer teacher does, but the other two don't." Why not? "Because they figure kids have already been using computers for years before they get to high school, so they have their own 'systems' in place by then." I asked her if the teachers who don't teach touch-typing can touch-type, themselves; she just shrugged. She's been trying for years to make it a requirement, with no success. The administrators don't see her point. HOW COULD ANYBODY NOT SEE HER POINT? With everybody using computers for everything from now till Gabriel blows his horn, how are speed and efficiency not crucial? Teachers who can't teach what they should teach pretend that what they should teach isn't important. I see it all the time. They have credentials, these teachers, credentials developed by theorists whose primary concern seems to be that everybody in the classroom be comfortable in every way, every minute of the day.

The best professor I ever had, Stephen Booth, used to say (probably still does) that nobody ever learned anything when they were comfortable--intellectually comfortable, that is. Socially comfortable, yes, but intellectually comfortable, no. Now all that matters is social comfort; intellect seems not to have any role at all, either in the seats or up front. I feel uncomfortable teaching material I know to be flawed, inferior, unnecessary, useless--but that's the daily menu I'm expected to dish up. I suspect I'm the only one who knows what chaff it is.

So yeah, I'm uncomfortable, in all the wrong ways. The kids are comfortable, in all the wrong ways. Pretty Luciana whined, on Friday morning, "I'm bored! This is boring!" to which I replied, "If you're bored, it's because you're boring." To which she shot back, "It's your job to entertain us!"

No wonder she thinks so. That's all she's ever been, in school: entertained, or not. She certainly hasn't been educated.

Comments

[fredf]

I feel your pain. You gotta get outta there. There IS a place you'll be appreciated. Surely.

[David]

I like your thinking.
However, if you are as good as you think you are, you will make a crucial difference to some of the kids and they will help carry civilization forward. Do your best.

Cold comfort perhaps, but until study technology is more widely known, many schools are still in the dark ages.

[trish]

Wow, do I relate here! My brother just came back from Burkina Faso, Africa, where he taught in an American school for four years. After two weeks in the States, he landed a job as a math teacher in a junior high in nearby Greensboro, NC. It is, to put it bluntly, hell. And you are right that it is not just the parents, though they play a very large role in not backing teachers who give homework and who need the authority to maintain discipline in the room. Not the just the kids, because when you put people in jail they act like criminals in jail. The teachers don't know enough, but they also face an unprecedented level of chaos in their classrooms.

Here's what would have happened in my brother's classroom if he'd retorted what you did about boredom: the kid would have gone immediately to the administration to write him up for name-calling, he'd have been hauled in and reprimanded and the parents would have been in a week later to chew him out some more for undermining the self-esteem of their child. I'm not exaggerating; this actually happened.

[trish]

Oh, and by the way, I totally agree with you about boredom. Boredom is a sure sign of a lack of imagination.

[Beth Cromwell]

Just found this article on the Web when searching for information to explain to me WHY my child is not expected to write in cursive. IN TEXAS it is not a TEK "state requirement", only in third grade after that teachers can choose to write in cursive so students can read it. It just takes too much time and the final reason was it is too hard for learning disabled children.. So we are dumming down our kids because there it takes time and it is hard for 10% of the kids ..hmm isn't that why we have teachers teach becuase kids need to learn things that are hard at first and it will time. Frustrated with a school system that doesn't teach..or for that matter grade any more either!