forging a philosophy of teaching through hard knocks

My political opinions have changed in recent years. Some friends have suggested that this may be a by-product of the aging process – perhaps. I won’t deny the inevitable drift toward crotchety geezer-hood, I’m stiff and achy when I wake up in the mornings. Even so, I think continued experience in the public school system and the memory of experiences with bumbling public agencies while being treated for lymphoma have led me to embrace the value of the Puritan work ethic in ways that I would have not done 10 years ago.
I’m certainly not going to baptize the profit motive. Exploitation is a reality. It does exist. What might be good for business is not necessarily good for everyone. Bill Gates is evil, yet I must confess that I see the majority of western middle class people arriving at and maintaining positions in society through the exercise of common simple human qualities such as: foresight, honesty, consistency, patience, fair-play, perseverance, and mental effort.
These qualities seem so commonplace until I see them glaringly absent from many of my own students or from employees of public agencies whose communication styles lead me to suspect that they were hired for reasons other than their competency in prerequisite skills. The phone conversation I have with one of them usually confirms this suspicion.
70s era pedagogical theory dominates teacher preparation programs as well as union rhetoric in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Underlying the theory is an oppression/victim paradigm and assumptions about human nature that closely approximate 19th century “noble savage” ideals. Children have an innate perfection that will stay with them if it is allowed to develop naturally – so the assumption goes. Adult society in and of itself becomes the problem when it impinges itself on the natural development of children.
The little darlings, you see, know what’s best for themselves and will pursue it when lifted from the burden of adult oppression and offered the right tools. Consequently, I defy anyone to find synonyms for “laziness, cheating, or lying” in the literature on teaching methods. You won’t find any mention of them in spite of the fact that these behaviors loom as the largest obstacles to academic success in Huntington Park High School as well as other inner city schools.
The students who succeed academically (and many do) are those who, at least, have parents who exhibit foresight, honesty, and perseverance etc. and have no reservations about imposing their will on their kids.
Students who succeed academically will probably not be begging for dollars at the bus stop. They will not be driving past guard bars at railroad crossings to find themselves smacked by the Blue Line train and thereby disrupting the lives of hundreds of more sensible people. They will not be making careless habitual clerical errors in future employment since they will be hired on the basis of qualifications not background or sympathy. They will not find themselves trapped in the slum areas of LA County.
Contemporary pedagogical theory expresses great concern for building juvenile self-esteem and empowerment. Quite frankly, I spend a good percentage of my time in class DIS-empowering inappropriately empowered students who flaunt an exalted self-esteem that is not accompanied by self-discipline or consideration for others. Creating “student centered” curriculum will not do much to improve a student’s economic future. Instilling rudimentary job skills like sitting down, shutting up, listening to instructions, and following instructions is almost certain to open a door or two for a job interview later on. Nothing raises self-esteem or empowers more than a decent paycheck for a job well done. Self esteem needs to be based on accomplishments and skills, not belligerent ideology.
Academically successful students will not be attempting to confirm baseless self-esteem by jaywalking through traffic and then whining about racism when they get a ticket. They probably won’t deliberately violate the terms of a rental agreement just to show that “no one can tell me what to do.”
My high school students are not stupid. They have, however, grown accustomed to school policies of accommodation, simplification, and very few substantial expectations. The recurring complaint that “this is boring,” is one that many students offer as though it were fully respectable and legitimate. They truly believe that the school is not doing its job unless material is presented to them like a Nintendo video game. They must be entertained. This is a mandate.
As long as teacher preparation programs continue to implicitly cater to these attitudes by fine- tuning what they consider to be magical methods of presenting materials to the special “schemas” of “helpless victims,” they will continue in their present function. They will continue to reinforce and populate the slum areas of Los Angeles County with people who cannot read or write or do basic math. The district appears to have tremendous empathy for juveniles whom they wish to treat as free independent adult consumers of education who happen to be oppressed by authority, but the end result is hordes young people who have a form of high self esteem, and have mastered the ability to put their desks together in a circle in order to cooperatively socialize in class. This doesn’t amount to much in the long run.
Some students will escape this vicious circle. It won’t happen through anything miraculous. It won’t happen through expensive special programs or through magical methods of instruction. Rather, it will happen through the exercise of simple human qualities such as foresight, honesty, consistency, patience, fair-play, perseverance, and mental effort – either by the students themselves or by their parents.
In a very real sense then, academically successful students will have earned a place in society that others in their peer group will not have earned.
I believe that the keys to breaking the circle of academic failure and poverty are genuine as well as intelligent parental involvement in the education of children. In the absence of these keys, I’d say that a stereotypical nun with a brass ruler will accomplish more than hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on pampering, compromising, indulgent school programs.