A Few Good Teachers© 2006 by Peter Jude Fagan The books, videos and other educational guides that define what a quality education consists of number in the tens of thousands (maybe even millions). Each and every one of them lists many of the above mentioned characteristics of a good school. Yet, we still have schools that are understaffed and teachers who are overworked. Teachers are bogged-down with tedious paperwork and students are not receiving a quality education. Our classrooms are overcrowded and our children must cope with outdated textbooks and workbooks. Not only do we not have sufficient computers in every classroom for the students to use, we have computer labs without state-of-the-art computers. Indeed, we still have some classrooms without any computers for the students. Meanwhile, schools are strapped for funds to purchase them because school board members are too busy playing politics. Teachers are apathetic and many have just given up, because all too often they must stop teaching and prepare their students for standardized testing, and there-by implement “the grand ideas of others.” All too often they must stop educating their students and prepare them for an irrelevant curriculum, a curriculum that does not prepare the student for his or her future. The authors of educational materials, school board personnel and politicians propose an excellent vision of a quality school. But one must ask: Are their visions just so much rhetoric to sell their materials or to get re-elected? I am not trying to say that they are not sincere in their beliefs. Nor am I attempting to say that we should not try to reach these goals. But I am saying that they are looking at life from a utopian point of view if they believe that we are going to build the schools they envision by endorsing standardized testing and the status quo. Reviewing their educational materials and listening to their speeches, I get the impression that it has been a long time since any of them have even entered a classroom. I ask each and every one of these authors, these school board personnel and these politicians: When was the last time you were in a classroom where one student hit or threatened to hit another student? Or hit or threatened to hit a teacher? When was the last time you were in a classroom where a 15 year-old student could not do her assignment because she was too worried about her unplanned pregnancy? When was the last time you were in a classroom where a latchkey student did not get help with his or her home work because both parents were too busy working a second or third job to help him or her? Or did not have breakfast because their only parent was working? When was the last time you were in a classroom with a student who was failing because he or she did not get enough sleep the night before because of an evening job in order to help support his or her family? When was the last time you were in a classroom where a student was not doing any class work due to fears over his or her parent’s divorce? Indeed, when was the last time you were in a real classroom? If these authors, school board personnel and politicians are sincere in their efforts to build quality schools, they ought to start by raising the quality of life in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. If they want to increase the quality of education for our students then they must lower the student/teacher ratio. This means hiring more teachers, not wasting precious resources on ersatz staff development programs, producing boring educational how-to-materials or giving self serving political speeches to get themselves re-elected. They must also teach job skills to all students, particularly those students who are not going to college. Having a student graduate from high school without any job skills is like throwing that child into shark infested waters without any life saving skills. I ask them a third time: What is the real goal of all your speeches and educational materials? Do you want to help our children or do you just want to make money for yourselves? If I may paraphrase from the 1992 movie A Few Good Men, starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore: Educators teach truth or people remain ignorant. It is that simple. People want the truth! They can handle the truth! We live in a world that has ignorance and that ignorance has to be overcome with education. Who’s going to teach the truth? The politicians? The authors of educational materials? Educators have a greater responsibility than most people can possibly fathom. These authors, school board personnel and politicians weep for the poor student and they curse the teachers. They have that luxury. They have the luxury of not seeing what the average teacher sees on a daily basis. A teacher’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to most educational authors, school board personnel and politicians educates children. These individuals don’t want the truth to be taught because deep down in places they don’t talk about at political rallies, they want teachers in the classrooms; they need teachers in the classrooms. Educators use words like reform, empowerment, curriculum. They use these words as the backbone of a life spent teaching the truth. School board personnel, politicians and these authors of educational materials use them as a punch line in their speeches and in their books. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to those individuals who rise and sleep under the blanket of the very truth that I teach and then question the manner in which I teach it. I would rather they just thank me and went on their way. Otherwise, I suggest that each and every one of them pick up a piece of chalk and stand a post. Either way I don’t give a damn what they think of my teaching methods! Meanwhile, we educators must stay in the trenches and slug it out and maybe, just maybe, a teacher can convince one student of the usefulness of sticking it out until graduation. This latter is my real vision of a quality school. It is a place where the basics are taught by a few good teachers. We must not deceive ourselves. To work toward such a goal, to build our vision of a quality school is not an easy task. It will take a personal commitment from each of us and many long hours of hard work. It requires a change in vision from within before a school can become a quality school. This is the most important and lasting change. It is an uphill battle and the forces that oppose us are deeply entrenched in their positions of authority, clinging to their own standardized and sanitized philosophies and maintaining the status quo. It is not going to be an easy task to return teaching back to the basics and away from all the ersatz educational programs presently in our schools. We also need to remember that “. . . all this will not be finished in the first one hundred days, nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days. Nor even perhaps in our life on this planet. But let us begin,” for if we do not, we all lose. We all lose because: |