No More Classes, No More Books, No More Students' Dirty Looks

Commencement was Thursday night. Fireworks were featured after the diplomas were handed out. Finally, my teaching career was over and I could begin recovering from five years of backbreaking, mind-numbing stress.

Now that I'm out, I am free to say what I want about public schools and the educational process as a whole. School as we have come to know it is an albatross, a white elephant, a red herring. The major learning tool of children is the Internet and will remain so until the Internet is destroyed or vastly discredited as a medium of information and, yes, even wisdom.

This is not to condemn the antiquated and grossly obsolete idea of "school," which seems sound -- training for life. But what passes for "school" these days is nothing compared to the "grammar school" concept in which kids "graduated" at age 13 and entered vocational training afterward. Those few that did not enter a vocation or apprenticeship did go into the "university" for "higher education." The "high school" was pretty much invented as the 20th century started in order to absorb idle and increasingly dangerous youth who were thrown out of work with the passage of revolutionary child labor legislation.

Drug laws that outlawed opiates also hit right about that time, further angering already disenfranchised (and broke) young people in urban settings.

Everything is radically different today. High school has been reduced to a quaint custom, a frivolous formality that is aptly and inertly symbolized by a cap and gown. But the opposite model is being pushed by big business and the state. These days, because of the explosive growth of knowledge in general, "high schools" in the 21st century have become almost what "universities" were in 1900, but with one important difference -- they are cumpulsory.

So where does that leave universities? They have become beacons of pure indoctrination, knowledge for its own sake, incendiary politics. No practical application, just knowledge, overlorded by a psychotic, antisocial PhD crowd that only seeks to ensure its own expensive, worthless existence. It's no wonder that at the beginning of civil unrest in Cambodia in the 1970s, rebels lined up and shot the university professors first. In that instance, that was the right thing to do. The "intelligensia" precipitated the disaster of that culture just as the intelligensia is precipitating the infinitely larger and more lethal catastrophe of post-industrial America.

In the students that graduated Thursday, a vast number did not deserve the honor. They were "passed through" by teachers weary of dealing with these people who had long since given up on school. Those students are wiser than they're academic masters.

Because of astonishing costs of public school and soaring teachers' salaries (still, teachers are quitting by the droves and retiring by the millions, stressing out an already drained retirement system), every move made by an active teacher is scutinized -- by administrators, by parents and by the students themselves. If a teacher strays from a firmly drawn line of conduct and curriculum, they are thrown out on the street like so many defective dime-store watches.

This makes the job of teaching impossible, even dangerous. No human being can work under that kind of societal pressure. Teachers are scorned, even good ones, because students aren't passing muster. It's not that students are not passing muster, it's that they don't want to pass muster. They are rejecting this system. They shout down curriculum, they chat incessantly on cell phones during class, even during performances if arts are involved, they obsess on MySpace.com and design workarounds (the sophistication of which would make any hacker proud) to negate any attempt by school districts' ITs to block this site and others like it.

Students study and know the law. They know teachers have been stripped of most means of discipline. It's now considered abuse. Without any backing from administration, parents and that state, it is hopeless for teachers to try and control activities in such a confining and uncomfortable setting. That is why school physical plant designs wore resemble prisons. The principal is the warden, the teachers correctional officers. Terms like "lockdown" and "jailbreak" and "what goes around comes around" and "get with the program" are used often inside most schools. Students are reduced to inmate status. This angers the criminals and disillusions and embarrasses the bright kids.

Never again question the reason why teachers seem to have it easy -- summers off, plenty of mid-term holidays and breaks, Christmas holiday vacations of tgwo weeks or more. Without those stoppages there would be no teacehrs. They would burn out in less then a couple years, or die of the stress. No matter how long they are away, teachers have to return to the nightmare sooner or later. Most teachers dread an extended period off because they dread ever having to come back.

Only every year, fewer and fewer choose to walk rather than try and come back for one more tortuous term.

Please Visit a Growing Concern

Rad's Ads Reach Thousands