Schools--Are Our Kids REALLY Worth It?

The other day I was subbing in a nice, safe suburban school. When I could let my eyes wander from keeping things from flying through the air or people from slipping in or out of the door, I looked up at a sign I’ve seen on many classroom walls.”
“Our kids,” it says, “are worth whatever it takes”. A lovely sentiment. Repeated over and over in classroom after classroom. Whatever it takes—our kids are worth it. The question crossed my mind—Is there any truth to that sign?
(No! I’m not talking about budgetary woes or millage shortfalls. I’m talking about the emotional and intellectual exertion, the sheer mental effort it takes to get kids to understand, question, learn and grow. Are we putting THAT into them?)
Do we really care? Are “our kids” worth the effort it would take to make serious, growing student s out of them? Let’s ask what would be really “worth it”.
Are our kids worth HOLDING ACCOUNTABLE? Are they worth going through all the hassle and complaining involved in telling them that they have work due tomorrow—and it MUST be done? Are they worth telling them there will be no retests?
Are they worth letting them fall flat on their faces if they have spent sixteen years refusing to listen or respond? Are they worth letting them flunk if they do not do the work? Are our kids really worth that much—or would we really prefer to go on shielding them from reality until it is too late to escape it?
Are our kids worth DISCIPLINING? Sometimes discipline has to be downright unpleasant to be effective. It may even have to hurt. Losing a job, smashing up a marriage or getting arrested can be seriously hurtful. Discipline that might prevent such experiences can in no way hurt more.
The Bible, interestingly enough, doesn’t say, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” It says something much stronger and more thought provoking: “He that spares the rod HATES his son; he that loves his son punishes him when necessary.” [Proverbs 13:24]
Ask yourself, what’s more loving, more caring. Letting the kid careen into flunking and failure, or getting his attention by making him hurt—and preventing the disaster?
Are our kids worth allowing them to reap CONSEQUENCES of really bad choices and actions. Some day you won’t be able to shield the kid from things that really happen. There’ll be no more retests or forgetting about it. Better a few consequences should land on them now than when they are legal adults with real responsibilities.
Are our kids worth INSISTING THAT THEY DO THEIR SCHOOLWORK and not keep sloughing it off? (it is a horrible pain to go through all the excuses, whining and bellowing that kids can throw in the path of a determined parent or teacher.)
That would be really caring enough—showing that the kids are “worth whatever it takes”. You’d have to give the teacher some tools to work with—including punitive ones. I’m sure this is definitely not what the “educator” who composed the sign had in mind. He or she was going for something far more saccharin and feel-good at the moment.
But fear is, after all, one of the impelling reasons people come to work on time and turn their projects in on time as adults. Fear keeps our speed down to fairly reasonable limits. Fear of the sergeant keeps the raw recruits jogging with their backpacks on. (It eventually keeps them alive when live ammunition is flying around.)
It’s sometimes necessary in the home and at school. It is—as any employer or military leader will tell you—a necessary component of leadership and of getting positive results.
Believe it or not, making certain you are at least a little bit feared is a necessary part of showing that your kids are really “worth whatever it takes”. It shows you care enough to go to the trouble to make sure they succeed. That’s real caring.
Just don’t expect to be thanked—now.

No Child Left Behind--A Fantasy

One of the things Obama recently suggested doing is making major revisions to the “No Child Left Behind” act that Bush and Kennedy put through early in Bush’s presidency. Not a bad idea. The bill was flawed in many ways.
For one thing it assumed that a teacher, no matter how good at teaching he or she may be, is actually capable of motivating children. In many cases this is false. First of all, a child’s primary motivation—or lack thereof—comes from parents. Peers come in second and the teacher is, at best, a poor third.
I can tell you from bitter experience that if the parents don’t see any value in school and they communicate that notion to the kid, there is very rarely any way you can reach him or her. Parental indifference—or hostility—is often an insurmountable barrier to an education. If you’re in a school where a substantial number of parents feel that way, you’re dead.
I’ve sat in too many classes where the kids look at an assignment, sneer, and leave it untouched on their desk. Ask them to pick it up and they will agree—and then put it down on the other side of the backpack. Federal laws aren’t going to make him or her pick it up.
Remember, you may no longer paddle a child or threaten him in such a way as to make him feel humiliated—so what do you have to work with? Nothing. Throw the kid out of the room because he is disrupting everyone else and he’s happy to leave.
Hard core recalcitrants do not respond to positive motivation, promises of a brighter future or appeals to the better nature. Ask the prison guards who will one day superintend them—and there are, year by year, more and more of this kind of kid.
There’s another issue. “No Child Left Behind” demanded that all teachers have class hours or certificates to prove their competence in a field. That has its dicey aspects as well. I’m thinking of a very good middle school history teacher I knew.
He’d majored in music, but he’d switched to history years ago. He was very, very good at it (I enjoyed talking history with him when I was in that school.) Under “No Child”, he was booted from history and sent back to find a music job—where he had academic credits but hadn’t worked in decades. “No Child” allowed no exceptions, not even sane ones.
The worst example I knew of concerned a man who spent twenty-three years developing a course in video editing. He bought cameras and equipment himself; he spent hours and years setting up a huge lab, and he mastered—and taught—all manner of arcane software. His class was hugely popular; kids almost stood in line to get in.
But back when he was in college, there were no courses for teachers in this subject. He had no academic background. “No Child” declared him unfit to teach video editing or filming or anything else to do with cameras and computers.
He was sent to the middle school to teach a subject he had once taken courses in. (He took his own equipment home with him.) They hired a young woman who had taken a course or two in video; her major was art.
She had no idea what he did or what the stuff in his lab did. They eventually broke up the lab; she went back to Detroit to teach art the next year—and the course is no longer offered at that high school. No one else had any idea how.
To bring “No Child Left Behind” into the real world will require a lot more than a glance at some transcripts. We’ll have to look at what a teacher can actually DO—and we’ll have to figure out how to motivate an awful lot of indifferent parents.
Baring that, you might as well burn the dollars as waste them on schools—which were never designed to do what we’re asking of them. And cannot.