GOOD STUDENTS, BAD TEACHERS!

 GOOD STUDENTS, BAD TEACHERS!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© March 28, 2011

A featured article on the front page of the St. Petersburg Times today (March 28, 2011) profiles a teacher in Pinellas County, Florida.  She is considered a bad teacher.  Yet, she has been teaching for 33 years in the system.  She is alleged to make kids hate school, but still she has a job.  Why is that?

This is in the public school system where the union is king, tenure is a matter of right, school boards are timid, and school principals and administrators go along with the drill. 

What is worse, most parents are not involved, and if push comes to shove, and there is a dispute between what the teacher says and the student says, parents are apt to believe the teacher.

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This has struck me as odd because most parents with children in school today came out of the rebellious age, but their parents didn’t.  Their parents were of a mind that the school was the absolute authority full of good will, integrity with the student’s best interest at heart.  I'm talking, of course, about grandparents who trusted the system.    

That created a culture of passivity with teacher-centered education.  The 60-year-old teacher in this article came out of that tradition.  She has had a rocky career but it has been impossible to dislodge her from the system.  The focus should not be on her, but on the system.  It is the system that has gravitated to self-protection at the expense of its function, which has become draconian rule instead of education.    

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When I was in grammar school more than sixty years ago, the Sisters of St. Francis taught me.  Some of them were brutal but most of them were not.  Nuns treated me well, but not my brother.  He learned to hate school and I learned to love it. 

In that simple sentence, it covers the way our next generation is likely to face the world making music or mayhem, contributing productively to society or draining society’s moral and economic stability through crime, incarceration, corruption social unrest, medical welfare, and massive unemployment. 

Health and wealth are incidentally opposite sides of the same coin, and a positive attitude towards education can be the springboard to a positive life, life style and a burgeoning society.

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In this article, a single teacher is alleged to be a major problem, and the piece is compelling reading, but the back story, whatever it is, which is not here, has to be considered before concluding this is one bad apple and the rest are all good.  I don’t think so.

The problem, in my view, is endemic to the system.  I have encountered problem in education in my own life.  The modest progress I have made was because I embraced rather than shied away from those problems.  Consider these aspects of the problem:

(1)   The role of teacher is changing. Many male teachers still act like little Napoleons and female teachers like little Empresses.  They know the material, and the student is supposedly ignorant of it.  They decide what is important and establish tests on that basis.  They have the power of the grade, and discretionary power as how to employ grading, measure conduct, and even dispense and evaluate homework.  They have been monarchs of the classroom.  Now they are failing.

(2)   The role of teacher now is more consistent with that of athletic coaches.  They must evaluate talent, develop training around and consistent with that talent, provide skill set materials consistent with the assessed needs, then motivate, discipline and monitor the progress of the individual accordingly. 

(3)   The role of teacher is now more consistent with the counselor, a person of empathy and understanding that will take the time to listen and explore the roadblocks to learning.  In the process, help the student gain a better understanding of the material.

(4)   The role of teacher is to assess the efficacy of the coaching and counseling, and to make adjustments in its facilitation.  The endgame is to inspire the student to be all he or she can be.  This is aided by developing a roadmap with benchmarks the student can used to measure his or her progress towards that achievement.

The emphasis on grades, on GPA’s and SAT scores has gotten so ridiculous to be nearly meaningless. 

My best education has been as an autodidact.  I have come to believe that it is the best education for everyone. 

Most learning is outside of school but the schoolhouse is not going to disappear tomorrow although it is increasingly anachronistic and conventional teachers atavistic.  Our culture has too much invested in structures and protocol to education to change radically.  I say this with no idea what the Internet will mean ten years from now. 

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So as not to make public school education the bad guy here, I can tell you first hand the problem exists just as real in the private school. 

Two of my grandchildren attend such a school in which the tuition alone makes you wonder if we still believe that to realize quality education it takes $20,000 a year.  I don’t think it does. 

In any case, there is a little Napoleon in this school who might be a bookend opposite the lady profiled in the Time’s article today. 

Recently, there was an accident on my granddaughter’s way to school, and she was seconds late for class, handing in her homework, which she always does religiously.  She was given a “zero” for handing it in late with no desire from little Napoleon for her to explain her tardiness.  This is a student who is straight “A”.

My grandson, in the same school, who is suspect of education in the first place, but has a quality mind especially for mathematics and physics.  It is where he shows some infinity for education, yet the little Napoleon in mathematics is never available after class to discuss problems with this fledgling scholar.

It is not an exaggeration that he has the potential to make a significant contribution to society but school instead is seeding his apathy.  A good coach and counselor would see the talent and go to hell and back to develop it, but not this little Napoleon.

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