Last night, while I was supposed to be doing something constructive - sleeping would have been good - I was touring blogs. And came across this item by a 5th grade teacher from Las Vegas, who calls herself "Quilldancer". Her write is an op-ed on the state of teaching in these United States, a topic I've been guilty of writing about a few times myself. Like here, and here, and here.

An episode she relates in the blog raised my blood pressure several points (see "sleeping would have been good", supra). I can do no better than quote it verbatim; I trust Quilly won't rap me over the knuckles with a ruler for doing so.

My classroom door opened and the reading specialist walked in. Tall, curvy, blonde, tan, she looked more like a Rodeo Drive Barbie doll than an elementary teacher. She stopped dead, tottering on her pointy-toed three-inch heels and stared around my room.

She noted the children sprawled on the floor, propped on pillows and reading. […] “What is going on here?"

I looked around, seeking the source of her displeasure. Everything looked normal to me. I smiled at her, held up my hands and queried, “Reading?"

“Why aren’t they in their seats?" She demanded.

I grinned then. “Oh come on, Marcia," I said. “When you read for pleasure do you sit in a straight back chair with your book on a desk in front of you?"

Her shoulders squared and her chin rose. “I do not read for pleasure," she huffed. Then she pointed at the two boys with the newspaper. “That is not reading!" She started toward the boys, stopped, turned around with a look of horror on her face and demanded, “Are all these children reading [shudder] fiction?"

I responded truthfully, “I have no idea, Marcia. It’s free reading. I didn’t pick their books for them."

She snatched the book out of the hands of the kid who had his feet up on his desk. The boy's, “Hey!" coincided with Marcia's horrified, “Goose Bumps!" She slammed the book down on the desk next to his feet, pinned me with a glare, and said very quietly, “This is school. These children should not be enjoying themselves!"

I wanted to ask her if she had any idea how asinine, she sounded. Instead I replied quietly, “I believe it’s time for you to leave my classroom."

She spun on her heel and marched out the door, warning me over her shoulder, “I’ll be back!"

Quilldancer labels this person a "Stepford Teacher". Which I think misses the mark, big time. I was thinking "Gestapo". I can't imagine how she could have allowed herself to be seen in public without her red swastika armband. Goosestepping into that classroom (neat trick on three-inch heels), clicking those heels together as she comes to attention, saluting the flag (purposely and pointedly ignoring the teacher) with her right arm out straight. "Heil Bush!"

Or maybe that's wrong, too. After all, she used the line "I'll be back". Maybe she's mechanical. A Terminator. Of Learning.

And the worst part about it? I actually have some sympathy for this creature. After all, the classroom Quilly describes is Miss Groby's nightmare. A pack of ten-year-olds sprawled higgledly-piggledly around the room, reading comic books? Where the hell did this sofa come from? Dammit, when I was in fifth grade, back when elephants had fur, we were reading Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. All of us. In the original Latin. Sitting regimental style in straight-backed, straight-seated wooden chairs straight out of the second circle of Hell. Straight to which you'll be going, Mr. O'Kelly, without passing "Go", without collecting $200, if you so much as breathe, young man.

Quilly and her system have one defense - which the Terminator In Three-Inch Heels apparently hadn't heard about yet. It works. Her students are doing well on the high, holy, all-powerful tests of No Child Left Behind.

But what does "well" mean? At what level are these students - our students - really performing? I'm still haunted by the factoid, which I heard some years ago, that the high school graduate of today has one-fourth the vocabulary of the high school graduate of 1950. When did we come to the point of seeing a fifth-grader with the Sunday funnies in class and saying "This is good, at least she's reading". When we, in 1963, were already reading fairly serious literature. OK, it wasn't the Gallic Wars. But you see where I'm coming from, I hope.

The Japanese educational system would make Miss Groby's breast swell with pride. No sprawling on a couch with Garfield there. No, sir. No calculators allowed, either. It's straight-backed chairs and abacuses and speak when you're spoken to, Nomo-sama. Perform or go to Hell. Without passing "Go" or collecting $200. And here's the sword. Student suicide is, I'm told, a regular feature of Japanese schools.

Now tell me which company made the car you're driving.

System be damned, I say. Almost any system will work, if people believe in it and work for it. How far it goes is a direct measure, not of the theoretical efficiency of the system, but of the energy that people are willing to invest in it. Didn't I just allude to the Nazis? Talk about a bad system. Bad enough to take a bankrupt nation on the verge of social collapse, and make it the master of Europe. In seven years. Triumph of the Will, indeed.

Here's another analogy. As regular readers know by now, I play in a municipal band. It's a good band, by municipal band standards in Maine. People attend rehearsals regularly, participate enthusiastically, and have a good time. And the band has a fairly active performance schedule.

But. The band's sound is imprecise and muddy. It has one volume: loud. Intonation and ensemble are poor. It's a triumph for the director to get the band to start and stop on time, pick a tempo and stick to it, and actually make most of the entrances and exits at the right place. Audiences hear all this, and mostly stay away from our concerts. Our free concerts. And I remind you, this is a good band.

We could, I think, make a much better sound. But that would require that people practice. And, at rehearsal, that they submit to much more rigorous direction, from a person who knows what's required to really make music and insists on nothing less. If such a person were in place, there would be no band. I know this. It's been tried. The ones who tried are no longer with the band. The band members will not accept the direction needed - and will blame the director for that non-acceptance.

And these people are old farts. Mostly retirees. Precious few young people - who are even less willing to take things to the next level than us graybeards. Yes, we have music in the schools in this town.

The municipal band director daylights as a music teacher, K-8. She was just crowing to me about a young person, trumpet player in the hybrid school-community swing band in which I volunteer. Junior high student of hers who is a long, long way from mastering his instrument - a $2000 pro model that's already full of dents from careless handling. Tone's one step above kazoo. And rhythm? I'm askin'. The kids who feature every week on public radio's From The Top were outperforming this fellow in utero. It's not like Teacher doesn't try. But he's not ready to accept any pushes. Yet he made the All-State scholastic band. At a fairly high level. Yes, this is Maine. Half the population of Manhattan. But, still. I can smell another band without an audience. Probably not even containing the parents of the kids.

Ah, yes, the parents. And the community of which they are a part. I vividly remember the near-crippling anxiety of a Japanese scientific colleague, on a year-long sabbatical in the United States. He was terrified that his son would fall behind his companions in Japan, precisely because he was enrolled in American schools. No, it wasn't the language barrier that worried him. It was the fact that our schools didn't have the content or discipline to allow his son to keep his studies up to the level Japan required. And he would bear the deep shame of being the father of a failed boy.

Us?

We don't need no education,
We don't need no Thought Control;
No dark sarcasms in the classroom,
Teachers leave them kids alone.
Hey! Teacher!! Leave them kids alone!!

All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

And we wonder why the schools suck, and teachers of any quality are leaving in droves.

   - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.