This morning, I had a meeting with Supt. of Ed. Jim Rex, Education Oversight Committee czarina Jo Anne Anderson, and various members of their respective retinues.
That is, I was supposed to have a meeting with them. It was placed on my calendar a couple of months ago (and had somehow neglected to set the Treo to remind me the way I always do), and for a time earlier than I usually arrive at the office, and I didn’t realize it was happening until I was halfway through breakfast, and by the time I got here I was more than half an hour late for it. I can’t remember the last time anything like this happened, and I am very, very sorry it happened this time; it was embarrassing.
The meeting was ostensibly to talk about the 2007 Report Cards, and I missed that part (since Cindi Scoppe had been hosting them, and I rely on her to pay attention and remember stuff even when I am here, we were covered — I just haven’t had time to get Cindi to regurgitate it to me yet). I know that the info they had to share wasn’t amazingly good news, since we had already seen the PACT scores — upon which the report cards are mostly based — and because I saw Jim Foster’s face (see below). Jim’s more of a class clown than I am, always with the jokes. (Long ago, three superintendents ago, Jim worked at the paper.) If he’s looking this glum, watch out.
Anyway, right after I got into the room, talk turned to discipline, and I started to squirm, not only because I’d come to class late and unprepared, but because I was once one of those one or two kids who distract the class, to put it mildly. (So was Jim, I’m sure, despite his severe mien below.) I sat there thinking how very, very lucky I am that I made it out of school before the era of Zero Tolerance. Which suggests a digression…
Honest, I’ll try to come back with some serious info from this meeting once I’ve caught up with it, but for now I’d like to share a piece from this morning’s WSJ about how increasingly unfriendly this country is getting toward kids like me. The op-ed was headlined "Adult supervision." An excerpt:
The Christian Science Monitor reports that colleges across the country now require permits or permission slips for undergraduate pranks. This was perhaps inevitable: First they came for dodgeball. Then tag. How long could something as spontaneous and fun as the prank escape?
Educational administrators justify the new prank rules by invoking 9/11, though most college pranks have as much to do with terrorism as a greased pig in the hallway has to do with the invasion of Poland. But the war on spontaneity continues….
At this point, either you’re nodding in smug approval at efforts to get those hooligans in line, or you’re cringing like me. Another taste:
At Mascoutah Middle School in Illinois, 13-year-old Megan Coulter was recently given detention for hugging two friends goodbye before the weekend — a violation of the school’s ban on "public displays of affection." One California school district worried about "bullying, violence, self-esteem and lawsuits" also banned tag, cops and robbers, touch football and every other activity that involved "bodily contact."
You know, when it comes to most things, I try to side with the grownups. Society needs to have rules. Hence my strong disagreements with the libertarians. But at some point, short of engaging in life-threatening behavior of the kind I worried about in my Sunday column, there’s a space where adults should let the children play. And please, please forgive them when they wander in a bit late… I’m sure they feel bad about it.
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The word I get from my two kids still in high school is that the classroom behavior of many students is abysmal and the lack of respect for teachers has reached shocking levels.
Cheating using cellphones, outright defiance of and verbal abuse of teachers, parents who defend their kids’ terrible behavior, etc., etc. At a meeting for the high school basketball team last week, the coach basically said he expects several players to be gone from the team by Christmas due to grades and behavior.
But at the same time, there are FAR too many rules and policies put in place (many due to fear of lawsuits). There are fences and huge security gates encircling the perimeters of public schools… I now have to have my drivers license scanned every time I walk into the high school to have lunch with my wife and kids… all in response to some phantom urban legend about kids being taken by strangers.
There is also a prevailing attitude that is communicated to the staff at the schools that there should be different levels of expectations in terms of behavior based on a child’s race and/or family income level and/or the number of parents in the home. Why? Why shouldn’t we set high standards for all the kids?
PACT testing is a complete joke. All it has done is create many gigabytes of data without any associated remedial action. When the numbers are bad, the test is blamed. When a student does poorly, he’s still passed on to the next grade. It keeps a bunch of educrats employed at the Dept. Of Ed. but it has not had any impact on the quality of education in this state.
Not to get nostalgic, but it was only thirty years ago that I was able to enter my high school on the weekend with just a wave at the janitor so that I could play basketball in the gym… as long as I made sure the door was locked when I left, no big deal. Now, I can’t even enter the school property on the weekend because there are two huge metal gates worthy of a minimum security prison blocking the entrances.
Our educational system should be focused on hiring the best teachers, paying them salaries that reflect the important job they do, supporting them with access to teaching resources, establishing and enforcing behavior expectations, and then getting out of the way.
It’s scary how fear of liability has changed our world and multiplied the “rules,” forcing school boards to erect barriers and disclaim responsibility for just about everything, “upon advice of legal counsel.” It’s no wonder educators are afraid to maintain order.
But parental attitudes have changed at least as much. The thought of suing a school or teacher was unthinkable to my parents and most of their generation. If I came home from class and made the mistake of complaining about being punished by a teacher, I’d be punished again, just to make sure I got the point.
The need for discipline was accepted as essential to the educational process. It came first, before everything else. Without it, nothing else could be accomplished. It just made sense that teachers were in charge. Who else would be? Students?
Yeah, I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun trying to get away with stuff if I hadn’t accepted that the teachers were in charge. Without that, what is there to rebel against?