Tag Archives: education

General Posts

Friday Morning Ramblings

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I’m trying to remain positive, trying to find optimism, trying not to succumb to the mounting frustration that gnaws at me every day. But it’s not easy. When cat memes go viral, when horrifically written novels sell millions of copies, when shoddy journalism prevails, when everything that garners national publicity seems substandard, it’s hard not to allow the negative to overwhelm my consciousness. When students day after day show less and less regard for knowledge, less and less concern for their own abilities, less and less connection to the world outside their smart phones, less and less ability to do for themselves, it’s hard not to hate what’s been done to education. But I’m trying.

Those of you who haven’t spent decades of your life studying a craft, pouring everything you have into creating something, and struggling for years just to get noticed, can’t possibly fathom how much it stings to watch steaming piles of manure rake in millions of dollars. It’s not that I write for the money. I don’t. I write because that’s who I am, and I’m pretty damned good at it, too. But the simple reality of this world is that we need money to survive, and not being able to break through that barrier of earning a living by my craft grates on me every moment of every day, especially when I see so much mediocrity succeeding in so many venues. I don’t want to grow cold and bitter, but it’s not easy.

Those of you who haven’t stood in front of a room of students and tried to share knowledge with them, can’t fathom how frustrating it is to watch them text and tweet or stare into the distance with slack-jawed apathy. You can’t understand how hard it is to find the motivation to continue when instead of blaming the students for being lazy, disconnected, and stupid, administration blames teachers for not “engaging” them properly. You can’t fathom how hard it is to squelch the scream building in the pit of my stomach as I want to grab them by the shoulders, shake the hell out of them, and wake them from whatever zombie-robot-drone slumber they’re gripped by. I don’t want to lose hope for the future, but it’s not easy.

Those of you who haven’t been shackled by the modern indentured servitude of child support can’t fathom how maddening it is to work 60 hours a week and barely keep enough of your earnings to survive. And no matter how much you loathe your job you can’t just walk away because the system has the authority to jail you and revoke your driving privileges and label you a deadbeat dad for missing those payments. If you haven’t been through it, you can’t comprehend the prison that creates, feeling tethered to a job in an economy with little opportunity for change by fear of contempt of court. I don’t want to live my life angry and spiteful, but it’s not easy.

I want to be an upbeat, positive person. I want to greet each day as a new opportunity for growth and renewal, but it’s hard to find positive day in and day out. I want to believe that my life hasn’t been futile, but sitting here mired in obscurity while my country devolves into the New Dark Ages, it’s difficult not to feel as if all the career choices I’ve made are wrong. I feel obsolete, small, and insignificant. I feel trapped in a system that punishes hard work and rewards sloth. I want to believe that tomorrow is a new day and that better times await, but everything tangible in my life points in a different direction. I want to find the motivation to trudge forward and press on, and it’s not easy.  But I’m trying.

General Posts

Tuesday Morning Ramblings

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I don’t know if I can find the proper words to describe what’s happened to education, but every single day the system gets a little worse. The bureaucrats have transposed manufacturing principles onto instruction, expecting to increase productivity by implementing lean production measures. But teaching a human being how to read, write, calculate, and think is not the same process as bolting together two components. Everyone learns a little differently, and skilled teachers adapt their methods to individuals. Today, the bureaucrats want a one-size-fits-all homogeneous model that only skims rote memory. It cannot and will not produce practical application of skills.

For most of us who teach, morale has never been lower. We are grossly overworked, grossly underpaid, and grossly frustrated by political forces that on one hand blame us for the failures of their system while on the other accuse us of causing economic turmoil with our luxurious pay and benefits. Most of us are quite literally at our breaking points, emotionally and financially. We have been placed in an impossible situation, asked to do an impossible job, stripped of nearly all authority, and then blamed for poor student performance. Meanwhile, we’re competing for the students’ attention with Twitter and YouTube. It’s nearly impossible to pry them away from their smartphones and laptops, but then, we’re blamed for not “engaging” them properly.

Our only hope for fixing this situation is for enough people to come forward and demand change. We need lower student-teacher ratios, higher pay, less standardized testing, more focus on application, less bureaucracy, and more autonomy in the classroom. We have to shift accountability back onto the students themselves. We have to halt this trend towards homogeneous curriculum and focus on personalized instruction that fosters skills application. We have to find some way to teach the next generation that not everything is supposed to be entertaining, and instead of catering to their deficits by adding flashing lights and buzzers to curriculum, teach them how to focus for more than thirty seconds. I say the next generation because I’m afraid this one is already damaged beyond repair.

Please, heed my warning: This country is about to lose an entire generation of educators. Once we are gone, whether it be from burnout, breakdown, or disgust, a wealth of knowledge will be lost from the system. Once we are gone, I fear what the system will become and what it will produce. Once thing I see for certain, we as a country are losing our ability to compete with other developed nations. We are falling woefully behind and more closely resemble a developing or third world country than the greatest nation on the planet.

General Posts

Friday Afternoon Ramblings

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I know I’ll catch a lot of grief for this post, but here’s one potential solution to virtually all of our political divisiveness.  Let’s turn the decision making on most, if not all, of these issues back to the states.  If each state has the opportunity to decide for itself, based on the will of the majority, how to settle these issues, then we can find out in real-time and through real experimentation which paths work best. Through the free market, the states that enact the laws which best serve the will of the people will thrive, and the others will struggle.  If people don’t agree with the path of their state, they have the freedom to move to one that best suits their world view.

For example, if New York wants tougher gun control laws, let them pass those statutes.  If Texas wants every single citizen armed, so be it.  Within a few years, we’ll know which one works best.  Crime in each state will reflect the wisdom of their laws.  If gun control advocates are correct, New York will become a safer place, while Texas will resemble a Mad Max movie.  If gun rights advocates are correct, Texas will in fact have less gun violence.  Either way, we’ll know definitively.

If the citizens of Tennessee oppose gay marriage but the people of Massachusetts want it, then each state, by the majority of its citizens, can make that choice.  Homosexual couples have the freedom and the right to leave Tennessee for a state that accepts their lifestyle.  Likewise, people who oppose homosexuality for religious reasons can move to states that support their religious doctrines.  Sure, people in Massachusetts may view people in Tennessee as backwards barbarians, and people in Tennessee may view Massachusetts as a godless land of heathens, but that wouldn’t be much different from how each views the other already.  The difference is that citizens of neither state will feel as if the other is imposing its will on them.

If Kansas and Arkansas want to ban the teaching of science and evolution from their schools, let them.  Let’s see how long their economies can survive without scientific thought.  We will learn rather quickly, based on the free market, which world view has more validity.  Companies and businesses can locate to each state based on the quality of education within its borders, and if Chik-Fil-A wants to leave states that ban religious doctrine from schools, and Starbucks wants to leave states that teach creationism, so be it.  The people within each individual state can thrive according to their own beliefs.

Healthcare can become a state by state issue.  Instead of sending money to the federal government, states can either create universal healthcare for its citizens or continue with our current system, based on the will of its people.  We will learn very quickly which model works best.  We can test in real time whether or not freeing individuals and businesses from profit driven insurance pushes up or down healthcare costs.  We can test in real time whether or not universal healthcare can be sustainable.  The states that thrive can become models for those that struggle.

We can apply this principle to virtually any issue, and by observing in practice which paths work and which don’t, develop long-term courses of action that best serve the country as a whole.  We can simplify the tax code by returning the vast majority of tax revenue to each state.  We can appease all members of the political spectrum by creating real-life laboratories for their political beliefs, and if they prosper, they can crow about it.  If they struggle, they can adapt or perish.  Whatever the case, individuals will no longer feel as if the beliefs of others are being forced upon them.  If they don’t like the direction of their individual state, they can move somewhere else.  I don’t expect this solution to ever be taken seriously or enacted, for starters because it would dismantle the federal juggernaut, but also because it makes rational sense.  However, I believe it could solve a lot of our problems within a generation or two.