Friday, June 18, 2010

US Educational System Jumps The Shark And Why (part II)

I am not a Teacher. That needs to be said, right up front. Why?

First: it is the Truth.

Second: anyone who reads this and disagrees with me will want that Truth to be brought forward. (Insert howl of "You aren't a Teacher and thus don't know what you are talking about!")

Never having been a Teacher, and never having the desire to Teach, does not mean I am completely ignorant of what it is that they do, how they do that which they do or what nigh impossible barriers they must face every day.

I want this as a matter of public record: Teachers are, in my understanding of the United States educational system, Public Servants. We believe in a free educational system, that all children of a certain age be sent to publicly funded schools, and there the children will learn the basics: Comprehension, Expression and Logic. Having stated that rather boldly, I will then support what I believe with the following: Of all of the Public Servants to which our collective taxes supply a foundation for an income, the following, in reverse order, should be the single, highest paid Public Servants: Teachers, Police Officers and Firefighters/Emergency Medical Personnel.

To what extent?

The President of The United States should not make as much as they do. They should have the best benefits, highest pay and most available time off as needed.

They should also be the most vigorously inspected and regulated. (Like that would matter... consider the means by which we track our more highly paid, highly visible "public servants"...)

Returning to the point, however: I have passed through the United States Educational System, from K-12 to my BA. My wife and I have three children, and we have seen all of them pass through the system, K-12 for two, one in college, one with a degree and now seeking another. (The third is a US Marine, which I believe can be considered an education in itself, if only a "tad" more intense.) My wife also went from K-12 and has her BS.

My parental in-laws both taught, my mother in law taught kindergarten and my father in law taught high school math. My wife is the eldest of seven, all graduated, all have various degrees (I think... I could be wrong; it has been known to happen!), three have BS in education and one of the three has a Masters.

While pursuing my own degree, I often had to attend classes with men and women who already had a BS and were required by Indiana state law to gain a Masters to continue to be able to teach in this state.

Their collective experience, watching them progress forward, discussing the things they were learning, hearing their frustrations... as well as my own experience both as a student and a parent... I have come to the following conclusion: Teachers cannot teach if they are acting as the parental units of other people's children.

The notion of in loco parentis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_loco_parentis) has become so perverted as to prevent the very function of Teaching.

Here, then, is personal experience number one, and it remains one of the most disturbing things I have ever experienced in the entirety of my life. (This includes three suicides, slow death by cancer of grandmother and mother...)

The event: A "Chili Bowl" was set up at a local middle school (junior high, for those unaware of what a middle school is...). There would be a meal (chili, go figure, right?), then a presentation, then an open discussion.

The presentation could have been titled: Why We Cannot Teach Your Children.

Social engineering is one thing; this was something else entirely. The classroom as we gathered parents knew it was a thing of the past, and not likely to return anytime within this or the next generation. Possibly never.

The single, primary reason: the family unit is no longer father/mother/children. The divorce rate, we were told, has become so high that in the majority, if that nuclear unit existed, it was as a blended family: step-parent/parent/child/step-child. In fact, we were told, the nuclear unit as we knew it was also outnumbered by single parent/child and/or step-child.

Jumping ahead, later that evening I was ranting full strength about how the profession of teaching was the only group of so-called professionals who cannot do their job without assistance. My wife (God love her) was biting her tongue, and when I was frothing about the Death Of The Nuclear Family Unit and what a crock of fecal matter I perceived, my daughter stopped me with one sentence.

"Dad, we are considered freaks in school because none of our friends have the same parents."

In other words, Dad had to eat some well-deserved crow. I had to think about it, and it was true. Looking over the family units of their friends, I saw nothing but blended families or single parent families. We, as a family, were indeed freaks. My wife and I brought forth all three of our children, and we, and we alone, remained as parental constants in their lives.

It was about this very moment of epiphany that I recalled an underscoring of this notion: one of my sisters in law, as mentioned, taught. To be precise, she taught in an elementary school, preteen students. She had already told us of the number of times the school would find children (preteens, remember) waiting outside the schools before the schools were open... because the parents dropped them there and left. Worse still, was the story that one of her students had attempted suicide by hanging.

Recalling, then, these tales of front line combat experience, as well as the others I had heard, combined with my own experience... something inside my soul was starting to boil.

The Chili Bowl (to return to that topic, the crux of the matter) ended with a discussion between parents and teachers.

Much was said, and many parents were sent off into a frenzy not unlike the one re: Satanic abuse and/or rock music (who needs an intellect when one can merely be prodded along by the media into a hysterical mob, right?). I listened, and frankly I fumed (not because of the chili, although that happened later). Finally, I looked at the teachers and principal that was at table with me.

Said I, "Look. I am not a teacher. I don't have the degree or the training. You all do. After all this time, and all this discussion, I cannot answer one question, and as I am surrounded by people that have Masters and at least one Doctorate, I am going to ask this question. What does it take for a person to be considered "educated?"

Before I proceed to the response, dear reader, please consider the following phrase: She (or He) is an educated person. That was a phrase that once held a certain meaning, a certain social weight if you will. An educated person was one with... education. So, the question, then (which I had to re-phrase in this manner) was: at what point can we, as citizens, say this person or that person is "educated."

The distressing thing was that I had to re-phrase the question several times. I only Comprehend one language (unless one allows me to revert to my original, native tongue of Gibberish), and I was struggling mightily with Expression (trying to keep from screaming never helps) and realizing that Logic was slipping away...

The final answer was: One is never "educated," education is a process.

So: by this standard, doctors, plumbers, mechanics et al... are not "educated," they are all either in process or have ended the process.

I refuse to second guess the profession of Teaching other than I have just implied. What concerns me more is the terrifying lack of responsibility, and as I have personally seen it, up close and personal, that is my real concern, and where I believe the issue begins and where it needs to end.

The family unit, father/mother/child is dead: requiescat in pace. So be it, selah.

I believe that blame is pointless, I have better, more important things to do with my limited life time left to point fingers. What I will do here, though, is approach the one issue that I can address, have seen, etc., and use it as a starting point.

"...(A)
man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man." -- Don Vito Corleone. (The Godfather, 1972)

We, as men, have allowed ourselves to become nothing more than a societal footnote. We have allowed ourselves to be put into the background. We have, for so long, defined what it meant to be "a man" via our means of generating an income that we have forgotten that the highest title a man can hold is that of Father.

Fatherhood is a profession, and any man who approaches it needs to do so with caution. A man does not enter into a boxing ring with no understanding of what may happen there or the political arena with no notion of the scrutiny one will face. We, as men, need no permission, need no accreditation or fanfare. To enter into Fatherhood is to enter into a life of sacrifice and service.

I could have begun a tirade against the notion of Feminism, but I have always been a Feminist, even when that term began to mean something more akin to Fascism than empowerment and hope. I will point here, though, to a "clever" saying, not as a form of blame, other than the point I am making: A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

The blame is not on the women who endorse that mindset, but worse, on those of us men that have so utterly failed at being truly Masculine that the mindset exists in the first place.

We, as men, need to stand, to fight. We need that Fire In The Belly that brings forth Warriors and Statesmen, the giants among us that shake the earth when they walk past.

We need more men who want to be Atticus Finch of To Kill A Mockingbird. All men cry. We don't like it and are loathe to admit it, but we do. For myself, the single most powerful scene in all of film is when, in the film version of To Kill A Mockingbird Gregory Peck as Finch is left standing in the first floor of the courtroom, a man who has faced his most ugly and fierce opponent and been cheated. He turns, jaw set, taciturn and walks out. Above him, a gathering of oppressed people stand, one by one, and from their group, a minister of the faith touches his child on the shoulder and says, "Stand up child. Your father is walking past."

THAT, friends and neighbors, is a defining moment, the kind of glory all men seek, but have forgotten or worse, forsaken for mere notoriety.

If we want to save our children, we, the Brothers Of The Fraternal Order Of Fatherhood, need to be that kind of man. We need not seek the affirmation of others or the approbation of the populace at large. We do not need permission. We need to stand, one by one, and take responsibility for our own children, be involved, and rear them instead of merely siring them.

Any man can impregnate a woman. A Real Man sees the project through to the completion.

Until this mindset becomes part of the hearts and minds of all men, regardless of skin color, religion or lack of same, political view point... nothing is going to change other than change for the worse.


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