I worry about the future for different reasons than most people’s reasons.  I worry about the future because present generations aren’t learning about the past.

Seriously.  Our students don’t seem to have anything to make connections to, these days.  They believe ridiculous things on Facebook updates.  They don’t associate Lincoln with the Civil War.  They think the Disney versions of fairy tales are the original versions.  They don’t know that the Little Mermaid died.  They don’t know any nursery rhymes.  They can’t finish a line of poetry.  They don’t know why Paul Revere rode through the streets.  They don’t understand the difference between a comparison and a contrast.  They are uncertain about antonyms and synonyms.  Most of them have never used a thesaurus.  Some of them have never heard of a thesaurus, and when they hear the word, they think it’s a dinosaur.  Most students think a dictionary is good only for a definition, and if they don’t know how to spell a word, they can’t find it.

I worry about a future wherein the so-called “educated” population has nothing filed away in their heads, but rely on Google to find out the simplest things.  I worry about a future that has me picturing, in my head, surgeons googling the whereabouts of the spleen with the patient on the table.  Already, we have a population that doesn’t know how to do math without a calculator.

TV shows make stupid people seem like the norm, and ignorance seem like the ideal.  Our schools are emphasizing conformity and punishing creativity.  Physical ability is trophied even while much of the population’s physical ability is atrophied.  Academic success is pretty much ignored lest some kid’s self-esteem suffer because he/she can’t do “it” as well.

Excellent work that, a generation ago, would have been put up on the wall so all could see and benefit and honor it, is now hastily shunted away because not everybody can do that well.  Kids who can’t do that well now no longer have examples of what things could be like if they worked harder, etc.  Bright, fast kids are advised to slow down, and ignorant teachers “reward” them by giving them more of the same or, even worse, relegating them to the hallway where they spend the day tutoring slow kids.

I worry about the future because people know nothing about the past these days.  I worry about the future because people are spending the present letting other people think for them.

What kind of future is in store for our children if they are not taught about the past, and encouraged to do things more than one way, and encouraged to apply and connect this with that, and that with the other?

Education is about connections.  If our students have nothing in their heads, lives, or experiences, what sense can they make about anything?  How can things be relevant if there is no relativity?

I’ve had students who couldn’t follow the directions on a box of brownie mix.  Oh, they could read the directions, but they weren’t sure about teaspoons, tablespoons, and measuring cups.  Imagine.

Speaking of “imagine,”  I’ve had students who had a hard time imagining anything because imagination requires connections, too.  Image-ing is possible only with prior knowledge – schema.  How can we create the “magic” part of “i-mage-ing” unless we know as much as possible about as many things as possible?

The more schema we can bring to the table, the more connections we’re able to make.  The more connections we make, the more we can understand.  The more we understand, the more we learn.  The more we learn, the more we know.  The more we know, the better able we are to cope and improve the universe.  Not to even mention those  sofa Jeopardy wins.

As for those teachers who advocate “no memorizing, no studying, no homework, no proving knowledge or mastery, and almost total dependence on electronics,” I have only this to say.

Bullshit.  You’re all full of bullshit.

And this from Mamacita, who advocates tech so thoroughly and enthusiastically that my students who don’t use the social networking that they were told to use are left out of the announcement loop altogether.

P.S.  Dear Students:  Midterms are this week.  If you skived off class and didn’t check Twitter, Facebook, Google +, or email, you’ve got a big surprise coming.

And if you aren’t able to make connections, it won’t do you much good to show up, anyway.

Mamacita says:  I’m guessing that many most bloggers will be posting tributes this weekend, and telling the blogosphere ‘where we were’ when the planes hit the World Trade Center. Here is mine. This is actually the second third fourth fifth sixth seventh time I’ve posted this on 9/11, so if it seems familiar, you’re not crazy. Well, not on this issue, anyway.

==

The morning began like any other; we stood for the Pledge of Allegiance, and sat back down to watch Channel One News, which had been taped at 3:00 that morning in the school library, thanks to the timer. But Channel One News didn’t come on.

Instead, the secretary’s voice, over the intercom, told the teachers to “please check your email immediately.” We did. And we found out what had happened.

I scrolled down the monitor and read the end of the message. The superintendent had ordered all teachers to be absolutely mum all day about the tragedy. We were not to answer any questions from students, and we were especially not to offer any information to them.

The day went by in a blur. Many parents drove to the school, took their kids out, and brought them home. Between classes, frightened groups of students gathered in front of their lockers and whispered, gossiped, and cried, and begged us for information. By that time, the superintendent’s order had been seconded by the principals, and we were unable to give these terrified kids any information. In the computer labs, the MSN screens told the 8th graders the truth, but they, too, were instructed NOT to talk about it to the other students. Right, like THAT happened. The story was being repeated by 8th graders, and it was being told bloody-killing-deathtrap-you’re next-video-game-style.

At noon, many of the students were picked up by parents and taken home or out for lunch. Those few who returned had a big tale to tell. The problem was, the tale was being told by children, and few if any of the facts were straight. The tale was being told scary-style, and the atmosphere in the building got more and more strained. We are only a few miles away from an immensely large Navy base, where ammunition and bombs are made, and we’ve always known it was a prime target, which means, of course, that we are, too. Many of my children’s parents worked there. The base was locked down and those parents did not come home that night.

Reasonable questions were answered with silence, or the statement: “You’ll find out when you get home.”

This, added to all the rumors and gossip spread by children, turned my little sixth graders into terrified toddlers.

As teachers, we were furious and disgusted with the superintendent’s edict. We wanted to call all the students into the gym and calmly tell them the truth in words and ways that would be age-appropriate. We wanted to hug them and assure them that it was far away and they were safe. We asked for permission to do this, and it was denied. Our orders were ‘silence.’ We hadn’t been allowed to hug them for years, of course, but there are times and places when hugs ARE appropriate. No matter, the superintendent stood firm: no information whatsoever.

The day went by, more slowly than ever a day before. The students grew more and more pale and frightened. We asked again, and again he stood firm that no information whatsoever was to be given out.

By the end of the day, the children were as brittle as Jolly Rancher Watermelon Sticks.

A few minutes before the bell rang to send them home, a little girl raised her hand and in a trembling voice that I will never forget, asked me a question. “Please, is it true that our parents are dead and our houses are burned down?”

That was it. I gathered my students close and in a calm voice explained to them exactly what had happened. I told them their parents were alive and safe, and that they all still had homes to go to.

The relief was incredible. I could feel it cascading all through the room.

I was, of course, written up for insubordination the next day, but I didn’t care. My phone had rung off the hook that night with parents thanking me for being honest with their children. That was far more important than a piece of paper that said I’d defied a stupid inappropriate order meted out by a man who belonged in the office of a used car lot, not in a position of power over children’s lives.

The next day at school, in my room, we listened to some of the music that had been ‘specially made about the tragedy. I still have those cd’s and I’ve shared them with many people over the past few years.  It is true that kids cried again, but it was good to cry. It was an appropriate time to cry. We didn’t do spelling or grammar that day. There are times when the “business as usual” mindset simply is not appropriate.

I wish administrators would realize that kids are a lot tougher than we might think. Kids are also a lot more sensitive that we might realize. It’s an odd combination, and we as educators must try our best to bring the two ends of the emotional spectrum together and help these kids learn to deal with horrible happenings and still manage to get through the day as well as possible.

Ignoring an issue will not help. Morbidly focusing on an issue will not help. Our children are not stupid, and to treat them as such is not something that builds trust. Our children deserve answers to their questions.

How can we expect our children to learn to find a happy medium if we don’t show them ourselves, when opportunities arise?

September 11, 2001 – September 11, 2011. God bless us, every one.

Mamacita says:  That’s a quotation; that’s not me saying “damn,” although I frequently occasionally do. I am, to my shame, greatly afflicted with “potty mouth,” and although I managed to control it somewhat while my children were tiny,  it’s back, in full force. Honestly? I need help.

But I digress. No two people are alike, but both of them are expected to progress at the same rate by our public schools.

Our children are expected to learn to read and write by a certain age lest they be labeled “special education” and given an IEP and pulled from the classroom to be tutored in the Reading Room. Most of them are little boys.

Old hippies like me sometimes have a hard time admitting that there really are gender differences that no amount of “environment” is going to change. One of those differences is this: a lot of little boys need a few more years than a lot of little girls need, to mature enough so that their bodies and brains can sit still, together, long enough to learn how to read and write. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that while a lot of little girls are reading “Gone with the Wind,” the little boys sitting next to them are still struggling to recognize letter combinations. It is also a fact that some of these little boys who still can’t do it in the third grade, or the fourth, somehow have their own “epiphany” in the middle grades; something in their brain becomes aware of symbols and their meanings and how to translate them to Harry Potter. It wasn’t that these little boys didn’t TRY down in the lower grades; it was that their bodies and brains weren’t THERE yet.

I saw this miracle happen over and over again. With my own eyes I saw it. Sometimes, when I tried to tell other teachers, especially elementary teachers, about this awakening, they did not believe me. “I had that boy in third grade and I’m telling you, Jane, that he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a reader, a good student. He just can’t do it.”

And I’m telling you, Madeline, that I don’t give a rat’s ass* what the child did in your class. I am trying to tell you that in my class, the boy can read. One week he couldn’t, and the next week, he could. And he’s ecstatic.

My point? Do I have to have one? I guess I could drag one in by the hind legs if you must have a point. How about this one:

Hold off on the IEP’s and the labeling until the kid is in middle school. Tutor, yes. Give special help, yes. Hang a label on his forehead and put it in his permanent record? Not so fast there, Teach. Don’t do it Not yet. Not just for reading. Save the labeling for the children who genuinely need the help; don’t fill up the room with little boys who just need a few more years to mature.

Same-sex classrooms in the lower grades? Why not? It might work. It would certainly be better for the little girls who, most of them, just naturally catch on to the reading faster; they could move on! It would be better for the little boys, too; they wouldn’t feel pressured and might get comfortable enough to relax and blossom, too.

Many of our most highly esteemed scientists, inventors, etc, were late bloomers. Edison wasn’t even allowed to continue at his school; he was so slow, he held the others back!

Let’s give our little boys a break, what say, people?

And by the way, taking away a child’s recess because he couldn’t finish his vocabulary words quickly is cruel and unusual punishment. I suppose the boy would then be punished because he was extra wiggly since his ‘outlet’ was taken from him? Energetic little children NEED to be let loose on the playground several times a day!!! Taking away recesses for punishment or to make more room for standardized test review is the action of a halfwit who knows nothing about either education OR children and probably hasn’t been in a classroom since 1972 teacher, politician, superintendent, or some other administrator who falls into the ‘nimrod’ category of typical la la land unawareness of real people and how we live. Probably people who do that don’t know how to access their email, either, or use a computer. But then, that’s what secretaries are for.

I put up with this for 26 years. No wonder I had a potty mouth.

And by the way, this guv’ment standard of requiring our tiny first and second graders to sit still for NINETY MINUTES and read without interruption is ignorance in action on the part of whoever thought that one up. Tell me, Mr. Standards: Can YOU sit absolutely still for ninety minutes and read without interruption? I thought not.

*Dammit **, there I go again.

** Crap.

For some reason, it just hit me in a good place today.

==

Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School

Rule #2. The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)

Rule #3. Sorry, you won’t make $50,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a chauffeur, either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.

Rule #4. If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he is not going ask you how feel about it.

Rule #5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.

Rule #6. It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it’s on your dime. Don’t whine about it or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.

Rule #7. Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation try delousing the closet in your bedroom.

Rule #8. Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off. Nor even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on.

Rule #9. Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or as polite as Jennifer Aniston.

Rule #10. Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.

Rule #11. Enjoy this while you can. Sure, parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing. Something or someone is always annoying you. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be kid. Maybe you should start now.

Rule #12. If your generation behaves itself better than your parents’ generation, maybe the example will inspire the next generation to behave itself altogether.

You’re welcome.

Bring it on. . . .

Mamacita says:  When it comes to education, I can be quite opinionated.  No, really.  I’ll debate with you about all things educational, and you might as well be prepared to back down at least a little bit because I probably won’t.  Not unless you’ve got a shiPload of experience to back yourself up.

Families that don’t value learning disgust puzzle me. How can people exist without curiosity, without continuous wondering about, well, everything? How can people NOT put two and two together every 1/4 of a second, every waking moment and a good deal of their dreaming moments? I don’t get it.And why should we have to get “four” every time we put two and two together?  Sometimes, the answer is going to be “22″ or even “babies.”  It all depends on – here it comes, students – the context.

Parents used to take pride in the fact that their children were aware of and had knowledge about topics the previous generation knew nothing about.  Now, it seems as though more parents get all upset and suspicious and offended when their kids come home spouting information that’s unfamiliar to the parents.

It’s called “knowledge, ” you ignorant attention-seeking small-minded overly-sensitive easily-offended frightened twits sad, pathetic things.

I wonder if perhaps one reason so many families view their children’s education with suspicion these days is that parents no longer sit down with the kids at dinner and ask questions about their day. Getting a child’s impression of a lesson while running frantically back and forth and trying to juggle schedules, and when the parent is dog-tired and unable to properly process information, can give a parent an impression that is completely inaccurate. Our society’s inclination to find offense in just about everything also comes into play, as do families with stringent belief systems that brook no questioning. (always a red flag for me; belief systems so fragile that they’ll crumble at a child’s honest question are suspect to the max, anyway.)

Perhaps if we took the time to actually listen to our children, we might discover that the world isn’t really out to get us, so we might as well chill a little and let our children learn things we didn’t already know.

I love this little piece of writing. Funny, how there is so much power in just a few words.

==

Papa the Teacher, by Leo Buscaglia

Papa had natural wisdom. He wasn’t educated in the formal sense. When he was growing up at the turn of the century in a very small village in rural northern Italy, education was for the rich. Papa was the son of a dirt-poor farmer. He used to tell us that he never remembered a single day of his life when he wasn’t working. The concept of doing nothing was never a part of his life. In fact, he couldn’t fathom it. How could one do nothing?

He was taken from school when he was in the fifth grade, over the protestations of his teacher and the village priest, both of whom saw him as a young person with great potential for formal learning. Papa went to work in a factory in a nearby village, the very same village where, years later, he met Mama.

For Papa, the world became his school. He was interested in everything. He read all the books, magazines, and newspapers he could lay his hands on. He loved to gather with people and listen to the town elders and learn about “the world beyond” this tiny, insular region that was home to generations of Buscaglias before him. Papa’s great respect for learning and his sense of wonder about the outside world were carried across the sea with him and later passed on to his family. He was determined that none of his children would be denied an education if he could help it.

Papa believed that the greatest sin of which we were capable was to go to bed at night as ignorant as we had been when we awakened that day. The credo was repeated so often that none of us could fail to be affected by it. “There is so much to learn,” he’d remind us. “Though we’re born stupid, only the stupid remain that way.” To ensure that none of his children ever fell into the trap of complacency, he insisted that we learn at least one new thing each day. He felt that there could be no fact too insignificant, that each bit of learning made us more of a person and insured us against boredom and stagnation.

So Papa devised a ritual. Since dinnertime was family time and everyone came to dinner unless they were dying of malaria, it seemed the perfect forum for sharing what new things we had learned that day. Of course, as children we thought this was perfectly crazy. There was no doubt, when we compared such paternal concerns with other children’s fathers, Papa was weird.

It would never have occurred to us to deny Papa a request. So when my brother and sisters and I congregated in the bathroom to clean up for dinner, the inevitable question was, “What did you learn today?” If the answer was “Nothing,” we didn’t dare sit at the table without first finding a fact in our much-used encyclopedia. “The population of Nepal is. . . ,” etc.

Now, thoroughly clean and armed with our fact for the day, we were ready for dinner. I can still see the table piled high with mountains of food. So large were the mounds of pasta that as a boy I was often unable to see my sister sitting across from me. (The pungent aromas were such that, over a half century later, even in memory, they cause me to salivate.)

Dinner was a noisy time of clattering dishes and endless activity. It was also a time to review the activities of the day. Our animated conversations were always conducted in Piedmontese dialect since Mama didn’t speak English. The events we recounted, no matter how insignificant, were never taken lightly. Mama and Papa always listened carefully and were ready with some comment, often profound and analytical, always right to the point.

“That was the smart thing to do.” “Stupido, how could you be so dumb?” “Cosi sia, you deserved it.” “E allora, no one is perfect.” “Testa dura (“hardhead”) you should have known better. Didn’t we teach you anything?” “Oh, that’s nice.” One dialogue ended and immediately another began. Silent moments were rare at our table.

Then came the grand finale to every meal, the moment we dreaded most – the time to share the day’s new learning. The mental imprint of those sessions still runs before me like a familiar film clip, vital and vivid.

Papa, at the head of the table, would push his chair back slightly, a gesture that signified the end of the eating and suggested that there would be a new activity. He would pour a small glass of red wine, light up a thin, potent Italian cigar, inhale deeply, exhale, then take stock of his family.

For some reason this always had a slightly unsettling effect on us as we stared back at Papa, waiting for him to say something. Every so often he would explain why he did this. He told us that if he didn’t take time to look at us, we would soon be grown and he would have missed us. So he’d stare at us, one after the other.

Finally, his attention would settle upon one of us. “Felice,” he would say to me, “tell me what you learned today.”

“I learned that the population of Nepal is. . . .”

Silence.

It always amazed me, and reinforced my belief that Papa was a little crazy, that nothing I ever said was considered too trivial for him. First, he’d think about what was said as if the salvation of the world depended upon it.

“The population of Nepal. Hmmmmm. Well.”

He would then look down the table at Mama, who would be ritualistically fixing her favorite fruit in a bit of leftover wine. “Mama, did you know that?”

Mama’s responses were always astonishing, and seemed to lighten the otherwise reverential atmosphere. “Nepal,” she’d say. “Nepal? Not only don’t I know the population of Nepal, I don’t know where in God’s world it is!” Of course, this was only playing into Papa’s hands.

“Felice,” he’d say. “Get the atlas so we can show Mama where Nepal is.” And the search began. The whole family went on a search for Nepal. This same experience was repeated until each family member had a turn. No dinner at our house ever ended without our having been enlightened by at least a half dozen such facts.

As children, we thought very little about these educational wonders, and even less about how we were being enriched. We coudln’t have cared less. We were too impatient to have dinner end so we could join our less-educated friends in a rip-roaring game of kick the can.

In retrospect, after years of studying how people learn, I realize what a dynamic educational technique Papa was offering us, reinforcing the value of continual learning. Without being aware of it, our family was growing together, sharing experiences, and participating in one another’s education. Papa was, without knowing it, giving us an education in the most real sense.

By looking at us, listening to us, respecting our opinions, affirming our value, giving us a sense of dignity, he was unquestionably our most influential teacher.

===

We need to stop assuming that everything our children learn at school is subversive. If we listen, really listen and look and THINK, and make our kids think, too, we might discover that our kids are really learning something cool. And if we continue to look closely and PAY ATTENTION, we might be able to detect it when the schools DO teach something dreadful.  As an additional reward for listening, WE will learn something, too.

The learning of, and comparison/contrast of, almost everything is wonderful. We know nothing if we only know one side. However, the deliberate indoctrination of almost everything is a dreadful disgraceful thing.

We will know the difference only if we actually pay attention. And before you go running to the school all outraged, make bloody sure you know what you’re talking about.

P.S. I totally agree with Buscaglia’s Papa. Nothing is too insignificant to learn, everything is connected, and the universe is the best teacher and schoolroom we could hope to find.

P.P.S.  The Education Buzz is up, over at Bellringers.

Fair warning:  there is “language” ahead. . . .

Mamacita says: I gave finals to five classes last week. Most of my students last semester were awesome; I adore them. I already miss them.  They rocked.  All semester, they worked hard, had wonderful discussions, participated, helped each other, LISTENED, made suggestions. . . . the combination of personalities was great, and almost everyone added in a positive way to the mix.  THOSE students finished their tests in silence, handed them to me, THANKED ME FOR BEING THEIR TEACHER!!!!! gathered their stuff, and left, quietly. I heard them talking in the halls a little later, about how much easier the test was, than they’d thought it might be.  That is how it usually is, for the students who take it seriously and show up each week.

How about that one slacker class, you might ask. . . Here’s how it went:

Most of even “that” class were great.  They took their test, wished me and each other a Merry Christmas, and left.  Most of them passed, and most of those who passed passed well.  However, that one truly slackerish guy – the one who didn’t remember to take the midterm exam or turn in any of his projects – arrived almost an hour into the session and was still there long after everyone else had gone home.

Slacker: This test is fucked. I don’t know this shit.

Evil Teacher*: The students with good attendance know it.

Slacker: Are you talking to me?

Evil Teacher: Apparently not.

Slacker: Do we HAVE to use a #2 pencil? I hate that. Do we HAVE to?

Evil Teacher: Yes.

Slacker: This sucks. I don’t have one. Give me yours.

Evil Teacher: Here, take it. Use it well, young Padawan.

Slacker: Huh? Whatever. I hate black pencils. Got any other colors?

Evil Teacher: No. Black is the color of despair. It is fitting.

Slacker: Whut? Huh? I hate this pencil. Buy some good ones next time.

Evil Teacher: I promise. . . . . . shakes head ever-so-slightly in wonder. . . . . .

(30 minutes later)

Slacker: I done mine in ink. Is that okay?

ET: No. Here’s another form; you have to use a #2 pencil.

Slacker: That sucks!!!!

ET: Yes. Yes, it does.

Slacker: Huh?

ET: You’re right. It definitely sucks. Do it anyway.

Slacker: Can I go to the can? I really gotta pee.

ET: Sure. You go to the can. And please wash your mouth out with soap before you return.

Slacker: Huh?

ET: I said, please remember to wash your hands before you return.

Slacker: Whutever. When you gots to pee, you gots to pee.

ET: You have thirty minutes remaining, you consummate dumbass Slacker.

Slacker: Do we got to do the ones on the back of the paper?

ET: Why, no. No, you don’t HAVE to do the ones on the back. In fact, you don’t HAVE to do ANY of them. It’s all about CHOICE. You are a FREE AGENT. You only HAVE to do the ones you WANT to do.

Slacker: Do whut? Huh?

ET: You don’t HAVE to wear your underpants rightside-out either, but most people do.

Slacker: Huh? So we don’t got to do the ones on the back?

ET: Yes. Yes, you do. You HAVE to do them.

Slacker: How’s come?

ET: Because I said so.

Slacker. Oh. Whutever.

(turns test in with only one side completed, and most of them wrong.)

Slacker: I gots a 9-month-old girl baby. She learning to talk.

ET: Dear Lord.

==

So. How was YOUR day?

*Evil Teacher?  That would be me.

P.S. Students lingering out in the hallway, hoping to hear a “show” and getting one, came back to the classroom to hug me and tell me they’d been sorry all semester that everyone had had to put up with Slacker; they congratulated me for not losing my temper, and then confessed that having Slacker in the room was like having dinner and a show along with the lessons.  Now that it’s all over, I have to agree.  I guess my question is, what kind of future does this guy have?  I already know the answer; he’ll be leeching off all of US for the rest of his life.  Sigh.  Most of me resents that mightily and only a teensy part of me feels sorry for him.  Life is full of choices.  He chose to be a slacker.

Remember, if you don’t take the trouble to find out what’s going on and what people are saying about it, you won’t KNOW what’s going on.  Not to keep updated is to choose ignorance.  Choosing ignorance is one of the most horrible things a person can do, no matter what the topic.  Education is what separates the sheep from the goats, because not to understand that everything is connected to everything else, and that nothing exists in isolation, and how to connect these dots to form ideas and understanding, is to actively choose ignorance.  We can’t help being ignorant about things we’ve never been exposed to, but to choose non-exposure is to choose ignorance.  Oh, and those people who take great pride in refusing to learn?  They are ignorance, personified.  Harsh?  I don’t really think so.  In fact, I have not even begun to express my disgust for people who are able, yet actively choose to be ignorant.  We are all ignorant of many things, but if we continue to learn, to be less ignorant daily, we’re on our way.

Oh, and please don’t forget that ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing.  Not the same thing at all, at all.

Parents, professional educators, and all inhabitants of the planet, simply must keep learning.  If we stop learning, “they” might as well bury us, because such people are as good as dead. Worse, even, because dead people don’t bring others down.  Ignorant people do.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE, as Alastair Moody would say.  To choose ignorance is to choose a kind of death.

P.S.  When I took my beautiful daughter to her college dorm and went back home without her, itself a traumatic thing, “Less ignorant every day” became our rallying cry for her college education.  We still quote it, laughing, when we learn new things and share them.  Why don’t y’all use it, too?

Less ignorant daily.  Bring it on, universe.

School will be starting soon – or maybe it already has – for most kids, and each year at about this time I like to re-run this post about an issue that really, really makes me want to kill somebody and put his/her head on a post in the WalMart parking lot bothers me a lot: community supplies in the classroom.

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite days of the year (besides Christmas Day) was the day the newspaper posted the list of required school supplies, and Mom took us to Crowder’s Drug Store to buy them.

I loved looking at that list, and Mom always let me be the one who got to put the little checkmark beside the items as we put them in our basket.

Prang paints. Check. Paint pan. Check. Rectangular eraser. Check. Blunt-tipped scissors. Check. Etc. Check.

On the first day of school, I loved bringing my beautiful shiny school supplies into my new classroom, and I loved arranging them all inside my desk. I loved to look inside my desk and just savor the sight: all those cool things I could draw with and paint with and write with. . . and they were mine, all mine, and nobody else could touch my things unless I gave them permission. Me. I was the boss of my desk things. I took such pride in my school supplies, and mine were usually still looking pretty good even at the end of the year. They were mine, you see, and I had a vested interest in them; therefore, I took pains to take care of them. Back then, down in lower elementary, the school supplied only the special fat pencils and the weird orange pens.

When my own children were little,  I looked forward to Buying School Supplies Day with just as much delight as I did when I was a little kid. New binders. New pencils. And the most fun of all, choosing the new lunchbox. My own children loved the new school supplies, too. I think it is of vital importance that all children have their own school supplies; it is the beginning of them learning the pride of possession and the importance of caring for one’s own things in order to keep them for any length of time.

It’s not like that in many schools nowadays. I learned, to my horror and dismay, that many teachers do not allow their students to have their own supplies now; the little sack of a child’s very own things is taken from the child on that first day, and dumped into the community pot for all the kids to dip into and out of. There are no “my scissors,” there is only a rack or box of scissors for everyone. “Look, there are the scissors I picked out at Walmart; my name is engraved on them; I wish I could use them but they’re so cool, other kids grab them first every time. . . .”  There are no more personalized pencils or a child’s favorite cartoon character pencils to use and handle carefully; there is only a big on chewed-on germ-covered pencils grabbed at and used by everybody in the room.

And since nothing belongs to anybody, who cares about taking good care of them?

I fully understand that the community pot of supplies is much easier for a teacher to control. I wasn’t, however, aware of the fact that teacher convenience was any kind of issue here. I taught in the public schools for 26 years and I never expected things to happen for the convenience of me; that wasn’t why I was there.

I fully understand, too, that some children’s little sack of supplies won’t be as individualized or cool as another child’s sack of supplies.  I know for a sad fact that some children will never have their own little sack of supplies, at least, not one brought from home.  That’s life; that should not even be an issue. Some children’s shoes aren’t as cool, either; do we throw shoes in a box and let the kids take pot luck with those, too? I understand that in some classrooms, a child’s packed lunch is sometimes taken apart and certain things confiscated or distributed, lest some child have a treat that another child doesn’t have.   When my kids were in grade school, my mother would occasionally stop by at lunch time with a Happy Meal for them – and for me! – and I was told this had to stop because other children didn’t have that option.  Well, you know what, my children were often envious of another child’s dress or shoes or lunch or cool pen, but I would never have tried to ensure that other children would never be able to have anything my own kids couldn’t have.  Good grief.  Such insanity!

Teachers should keep an eye out for those kids who don’t have supplies, and the school should supply them, but after that point, they become the child’s own and he/she should be required to take good care of them, just as any and every kid should be required to take care of his/her things. Children who take good care of their things should not be required to supply children who had their own things but didn’t take care of them properly. As a little child, I was horrified at the thought, and as a parent, I’m even more horrified.  It was like a reward for being negligent! Every year, I donate tons of school supplies to my neighbor’s children’s school; I’m delighted to do this,  and I recommend this to all of you.  Perhaps, if schools have enough donated supplies, our little children will be allowed to keep their very own supplies once again.

When I was a child, I had very little that was my very own. Everything that was supposedly mine was expected to be shared with anybody else in the house that wanted it at any given moment. But at school? In my desk, in my very own desk, were things that were inviolably mine, and I can not even describe for you the sensations that went through me when I looked at those things that my teacher had ruled were mine and only mine. Kids who violated another kid’s desk were quite properly labeled ‘thieves,’ and they soon learned what happens when a person put his hands on property that was not rightfully theirs.

Things are very different now. I hate it. The rare teacher who takes the time and trouble to allow his/her students to have their own things is often castigated by the other teachers who are taking the easy ‘community property’ route. Kids are sharing more than gluesticks and pencils, too; I don’t even want to THINK about the incredible pot-o-germs they’re dipping into daily. Gross. My child using a pencil some other child gnawed? I guess so, because teachers who don’t want to bother with a child’s private property are forcing the kids to dump it all in the pot for everybody to use. “Don’t be selfish.” “Share.” Well, you know what? I don’t like that kind of forced sharing. I had to share everything, EVERYTHING, and that little pile of school supplies was my only private stash of anything. I do not feel it was selfish, or is selfish, to want to keep school supplies that were carefully chosen, to oneself.  Children who have their own things learn to respect the property of other children.  Children with no concept of personal property tend to view the world as a buffet of delights awaiting their grasping, grabbing hands.  Both tend to grow into adults with the same concepts learned as children.

This business of everything being community property in the classroom causes problems in the upper levels, too. Junior high, high school, even college students, are expecting things to be available for them without any effort on their part. Upper level students come to class without pencils, erasers, paper, etc, because they’re used to having those things always available in some community bin somewhere in the room. They have never been required, or allowed, to maintain their own things, and now they don’t know how to. The stuff was always just THERE, for a student to help himself to. And now that they are supposed to maintain their own, they really don’t know how. Plus, why should they? HEY, I need a pencil, Teach, gimme one. No, not that one, that other one there.       Indeed,

Well, it worked down in the lower grades, with community property. You just get up and help yourself; everything in this room is for me, ain’t it? Gimme that pretty one, I want it.

But guess what, kids, it’s evil enough down in the lower grades, but it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, work at all when you hit the upper grades. I’d like to have a penny for every hand that tried to help itself to things on my desk, because, well, they were there. I’ve even had students who opened my desk drawers, looking for supplies. Not poor kids who didn’t have any; just a kid who didn’t bring any and expected everything to be supplied because, well, down in the elementary, everything WAS.

Oh good grief, teachers, let the little kids keep their own things, put their names on them, and learn how to be responsible for them. Secondary teachers and future employers will greatly appreciate it.

I know that in some cases, it’s not the individual teacher’s decision – it’s a corporate mandate.  This is even more evil.  It’s like a national plot to make future generations needy and dependent and reliant on others to fulfill all their needs. And don’t we already have more than enough of THOSE people?

Let me sum up, as Inigo Montoya would say:  Community school supplies are wrong on every possible level.  Period.

Parents, if I were you – and I am one of you – I’d buy the community bin stuff at the Dollar Tree instead of the overpriced educational supplies store in the strip mall that the school supplies newsletter instructs you to patronize.  Send them to school and let them be dumped into the bins for mass consumption and germ sharing.  Then you and your children go shopping and pick out the good stuff.  If your school informs you that it’s against their policy for any of the children to have their own supplies, you inform the school that you don’t give a rat’s ass about such a policy; you did your chipping in and now you’re seeing to it that your children have their very own stuff and that you expect your children’s very own stuff to harbor no germs except your own children’s germs, which will be considerable, but that’s another topic.  What’s more, if your children come home and tell you that their very own supplies are not being respected and are in fact being accessed by others without permission of their rightful owners, you should high-tail it to that classroom and raise bloody hell.

I am happy to see to it that all of the children in the room have adequate supplies, but I can’t stress strongly enough that each child needs and deserves to have his/her very own personal private stash of supplies that nobody else can ever touch.

Do I seem overly obsessed about this topic?  Darn right.  The very concept of community school supplies makes me so furious I become incoherent.  Which is apparently happening right now so. . . .

My blog, my rules.  What up, dawggggg?

I admit it: too much Scrubs.

Here’s the post:

Is anyone else out there lucky enough to have a job that makes you so happy that all you have to do is walk into the building and you feel the positive vibes? My days seem so short now; most days I feel as though I’ve just begun, and bingo, it’s time to go to bed again.

I get tired, yes. I am exhausted, usually, by the end of the day. But even so, I love this teaching gig with a passion I didn’t even know I was still capable of after enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous public school dealings for so long.

I think that after so long in the school systems of our country, the teachers who stay evolve a mindset that is almost enslavement. We endure schedules and treatment that no other professional would dream of enduring. We allow ourselves to be used and misused and overworked, all in the name of love for our students. What other professionals have a clientele that pretty much expects to be supported, fed, dressed, taught, and catered to in every possible way, without showing the least bit of gratitude?

We get so used to it, we don’t even realize that there is another world out there, where people show each other respect.

We really do love the students, don’t get me wrong. But year after year in a public school kind of makes a teacher numb to any other possibility that might be out there for a person with these talents. Every year it gets worse and worse, even while we are thinking and saying things like “Next year it will be better.”

But it never is.

Next year, the classrooms are more overcrowded, there are fewer books, there are more dysfunctional families who seem to be in charge of the system, there are more duties, there are more responsibilities, there are more problems, there are more “incidents,” and there is less and less support. There is no respite. There is no discipline. The teacher’s union here stands idly by and allows a principal to schedule a teacher to the point that there isn’t even time in the course of the day to blow her nose. I am not exaggerating, either. The contract guarantees some prep time daily? We’ll count walking down the hall to fetch yet another class as break-time. We’ll count your driving time, from building to building, as your lunch. Ask any music teacher if I’m stretching the truth.

Yes, every year it’s worse. And a teacher doesn’t really know how bad it is, until that teacher walks out and tries something new.

Me, for instance.

And now, I teach every day in a building full of wonderful hardworking students and smiling administrators and friendly janitors and awesome bosses who TALK TO US AS THOUGH WE WERE EQUALS (instead of slaves) and the building resounds with humor and happiness and dedication.

Heck, even the restrooms here are superior. And there is ALWAYS toilet paper!!!!! The halls and classrooms are clean and well-maintained. Everyone behaves properly.

The sad and odd thing is, I did not know how bad it actually was until I left the public schools. While I was there, I was the most loyal and hardworking and dedicated person in the building. Sure, the days seems awfully long, and sometimes the despair and frustration were so thick one could cut it with a knife, but it was my obsession, to somehow be a positive force in this not-very-positive place. I came to school at 7:00; I got home around 6:00. I was determined to make a difference, a positive difference.

But, but, there was no appreciation. There was only the expectation that if I could do that, I should be doing even more.

I couldn’t keep on.

But now? I feel positive every day. I love coming to school. All I have to do is walk into this building and I am instantly wide-awake and happy.

Sure, there are some, um, “interesting” students here, but MOST of them are pure quality.

I still work the long hours. But I am appreciated, and treated like the professional I’d forgotten I was, all those years.

And now, I truly believe I am helping to make a positive difference. I can see it. I can hear it.

Scheisse, I love my job.

The really ironic thing is that in spite of all the negative things about the public schools, I still believe that this nation’s schools are the hope of our future. There is such potential in every classroom, such stories to be told, such wondrous talent and creativity and sensitivity and music concealed behind the t-shirts and the grubby jeans and exposed underwear and defiant raising of the eyebrows and the punky hair and the chips-on-the-shoulders and the trendy slang and the stubborn glares. . . . there is poetry behind the obscenities, and magnificent scientific discoveries behind the unwillingness to conform.

It’s too bad teachers are no longer allowed to cultivate it.

Why can’t we be allowed to step back and bask in the glow of unbridled enthusiasm, and throw ourselves into helping students learn and discover and grow, grow, grow, both physically and mentally and socially and culturally and scientifically. . . . .

What happened to us as a people, as a culture, as a nation, that our idea of ‘school’ has sunk to the level of equating success with a number on a piece of paper?

I do tend to rant, don’t I. My apologies.

I miss what my former job might have been, in a perfect world.

But oh golly, I do love my job now!!!!

Factor in individuality, talent, brains, work habits, etc, and you can’t help but have a set of expectations, and expectations should be met.

I know that there are exceptions to this and most other things, but I honestly believe that every kid should do his/her best, because NOT to do so just isn’t good enough, no-allowance-today-boy.

Of course, I also believe that a good parent knows what’s going on in his/her kids’ classrooms, too. That is, we should be aware that our kids, this grading period, are studying about the Revolutionary War, reading “The Giver,” writing little newspapers about things that happened in 1774, making recipe books with directions for preparing foods that the Founding Fathers (and Mothers) might have eaten, researching which Nation was already here and where they were forced to relocate and how do you feel about that, studying 50 words and their unique rules and exceptions to those rules, learning all about Peer Gynt and how to at least hum a few of the more popular melodies, and how to deal with fractions in everyday life (see recipe book assignment, above.)

And now I wish I were back in the fourth grade, doing just such things. Sigh.

Of course, nowadays there isn’t much time for creative assignments because the teachers are forced to use the time they might have utilized for such, to review and prepare for the almighty standardized test.

Personally? I believe that tests are sometimes necessary and occasionally important, but I also believe that the questions should pertain to “things every fourth-grader should know based on the available books and the creativity of the teachers,” not “things that are being pounded into every fourth-grader’s head starting three weeks before the Test because some old guys in the State Department who were influenced by a book salesman said so.” In other words, give each child a test based on standard fourth-grade curriculum. It would better benefit the child, and it would also better tell which children were at grade level, not that grade level is even the real goal.

As a child, I was always six or seven grade levels above the rest in anything regarding reading, writing, spelling, grammar, history, etc, but down in the depths of second grade remediation in math.

Guess what. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now.

In ten years, whatever your child scores on that test won’t mean anything, either.

What are those tests, anyway? They are tests put together by people who haven’t been in a classroom for years, if ever. It’s a test that is embraced by textbook publishers and salesmen, in hopes that the inevitable low scores will inspire schools to purchase THEIR books, because the new books all have individual State Standards written right in them and golly gee whiz, if the school buys OUR books, the students will do much better on those tests.

Eh, I’m rambling again. I really despise a school system that puts such emphasis on one test score that it ignores or neglects the really important part of a child’s education, to wit, the learning of things that will enable the child to better take care of himself/herself and others as an adult, to appreciate and love the writings and pictures and history of those who came before, to understand and appreciate music and art, and to be a part of a little community in which every child has an important role. Our students these days don’t understand how one vote can make or break an entire government. Some students don’t even know anyone who votes.

For some of our students, the teachers are the only adults they know who work for a living.

Many homeschoolers are turning out children with superior educations and abilities, and many are simply teaching their children that isolation from ‘other’ people is better and that it’s nobody’s business if you are fifteen and still don’t want to try to learn to read yet but be careful because if you raise the curtains, big government will SEE what we’re doing, or not doing, and try to interfere and make you LEARN to read so you can be JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER CLONES.

Sometimes it seems like a losing battle, and yet, these are our children, the hope of our nation, and we have to keep trying.

After a certain age, I do not believe that blaming one’s shortcomings on one’s background or family is a viable argument. Ultimately, each person must stand on his/her own feet and walk out into the sunshine and shadow of life and do it all alone. We must not send our children out there unprepared, and yet, what do we do when the families support their children in their desire to NOT work at it?

I keep saying this but here it is again: There are certain skills that intelligent persons simply must have, at certain ages. When one becomes a self-sustaining adult, (which status of course many ‘adults’ never attain because their families and they themselves allowed them to go through school without doing or learning anything!!!) (My SELF ESTEEM!!!!!!) a decent person will be armed with skills, marketable skills, with which to earn one’s own living.

To allow any person to leave any kind of school without these skills is a crime. And a high school diploma given to any person without these skills is a joke.

If your child is 27 and still isn’t interested in learning to read and is still playing video games all day and still hasn’t learned to write and doesn’t know how to spell or reason. . . . well, I guess you all know my opinion of your child. And of you. And yes, it does become my business after a certain point because my tax dollars will be supporting your bum kid.

I worry about us as a society, I really do.