Oh Captain! My Captain...!
Posted on 05/30/2006 6:16:57 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
(Excerpt) Read more at spinninglobe.net ...
The article is a couple of years old, but very revealing.
Well, I've only been teaching for 2 years but I have to disagree. I am never bored with teaching or with what I'm teaching. Only frustrated that my students don't see the value in learning to write well. They just don't think it's a valuable skill.
Oh Captain! My Captain...!
Everything Gatto writes is very revealing. You ought to read "The Six Lesson School Teacher" Do a search for his name.
It will open your eyes!
Here's a statement worth remembering:
"By the time I finally retired in 1991, 1 had more than enough reason to think of our schools-with their long-term, cell-block-style, forced confinement of both students and teachers-as virtual factories of childishness."
I won't argue that there are problems in the schools that can be directly tied to the unions, the teachers and the administration, but I have tell you that a lot of the problem is a large contingent of students who aren't going to learn no matter what you do. This group of students is large enough to seriously bias educational statistics.
I like this one better.
One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted.
How did I degrade teaching?
But it does get old, year after year.
I decided once that the schools were training bureaucrats to work in the state government. And they are run by bureaucracies. I am not sure corporations have much of a role.
Read his book!
The Underground History of American Education
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
HOMESCHOOL PING
(An older article, but still worth the read).
There are a lot of dedicated, concerned, and well-meaning individuals who work in the public schools, and I'm sure you're one of them. They do their best, but their individual efforts are undermined by the system as a whole.
Yes. The system as a whole reinforces the childrens' sense of entitlement and their motivation is nil because of it.
CC&E
"Genius is as common as dirt."
I totally agree with this statement...
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