Apr 30 2008
The Failing Grades of Schools
Warning: Rant and Personal Views here. Some may be controversial and offending to some.
As some of you know who have been following my blog I am a public school teacher and a football coach. Me and my wife have been looking into many different avenues to be able to teach and give what we have. The current school system just does not let us do this. Why?
They are factories. I am sorry people but not everyone is an expert in schools. One of the problems with schools is that everyone thinks that they are experts. Why? Because everyone has been to school. But they have only seen one or two parts of what school is.
Everyone has seen school from a students stand point. Yes it is boring, yes some of the teachers can seem apathetic. Yes you probably didn’t like it. Why? It was not stimulating enough, it was not interactive enough, and for most of us it just was not challenging enough.
The teachers are not apathetic, they are board to. So why don’t they do anything about it? Because you have not seen the other part of education. Very few have. I know. I have been in schools now for 7 years, early in the morning. You know who is there early in the morning? Teachers and Principles. Thats it. Don’t try to say that you know how things are. If you have had a parent meeting early in the morning you still don’t know what it is like. You still don’t see teachers scrambling to use broken copiers, outdated books, limited resources, and limited time. You don’t see the struggles that many teachers go through.
If you are reading this and you are a teacher who has these resources then you are one of the lucky ones. You don’t have it made, but you are getting closer.
What about after school? Yes many teachers leave within the first 15-20 minutes that school is over. But what do they do at home. Most of the time they leave because school is a very negative place. Teachers like to bitch about the latest problems with Principles, Students, Parents, the School Board, our President, whatever. No one is immune. It is not harmful, it is just venting. But it is extremely negative.
So they take their work home so that they can do it in their own setting. Most teachers have homework. If you are one of the lucky ones (I am included in this) then you have a system set up in your classroom that lets you be done at 2:30 or whenever you school lets out. But it takes years of planning until you get to that point.
Back to the factories. To get to that point it has to be run like a factories. The worst possible system for a school to be run. It just does not work. It is not innovative, it is not creative, it is not real learning. Concepts are being replaced by techniques to get the answer right. True learning is being replaced by memorization. We have the technology and the ability but not the means. It is very frustrating.
Why? Because we are tested. Not just our students. Teachers can be hired and fired from tests. Students just have to take them to pass. Not teachers. No matter what anyone tells you teachers are judged based on how well their students do. It is unfair because these tests take all the learning out of schools and limit themselves to rote learning just to get students graduated so that the school gets enough money to pay the staff and turn on the lights. It is a sad sad time in public schools.
