Just Another Writer

Photo by uberculture

Last week, we had a meeting at work, and someone suggested that our school needed to have more parental involvement. You could see eyes rolling all around the table. You see, we have parental involvement, it’s just not the kind that we’d like to have. The type of parental involvement that I most frequently experience is a woman wearing a long t-shirt and slippers getting in my face because I wouldn’t let her child into our disciplinary alternative school with his pants hanging down to his knees. Other staff members share similar experiences. Here are a few of mine–I know that you guys wouldn’t do any of these things, right? Right???

Example 1:

Yesterday I had a phone conversation with the college-educated mother of 15 year-old budding sociopath. He has a father at home too, in case anyone is wondering. Here is a highlight from the conversation:

Parent: “Well, I really don’t want his 18 year-old girlfriend picking him up from school, but he argues with me about it so much that I give in once a week. I figure that way he won’t pester me so much. I really wish that you would tell him that your school won’t allow his girlfriend to pick him up. It would make things a lot easier.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll be the bad guy if that helps. I’ll let him know today.”

Of course, you can imagine who the kid is really angry at right now, and it’s not mom. Mom and dad play the “good guy” role. They may be scared of him, actually. He’s a pretty intimidating kid. The thing is, would he be so intimidating if mom hadn’t allowed him to bully her into letting him have his own way for years? Possibly not.

Example 2:

I had another student whose parent never knew where he was–for days. The only time this parent showed concern was when he was about to be expelled. You see, if he didn’t attend school, she wouldn’t receive his disability check. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, it is possible for nonworking parents of kids with disabilities like ADD to get checks from the government, at least here in Texas. There are a lot of requests for special education testing…

Example 3:

Our rules state that students cannot wear grills to school. One of my students asked me numerous times what would happen if the grill was permanent. I told him to ask the principal, because I thought that he would not be able to attend school unless it was removed. He went and did it anyway. Sure enough, the principal told him that he had to have it removed.

The kid’s parents, who had paid for the damn thing, were immediately right up in the principal’s office complaining about how much it was going to cost them to go and have it removed. It was all the school’s fault, you see.

In spite of these things, I have signed a contract for another year. But forget about the whole parental involvement thing. I like the kids much better.

Photo by Yo Spiff

I’ve been working on a theory lately.

According to the Foundation for Child Development’s “2006 Child Well-Being Index”, children’s educational achievement levels have largely “flat-lined” since 1975. They had been declining prior to this, and from my perspective, they’ve done more than flat-line, they’ve fallen down a very deep well.

At the risk of oversimplifying what is apparently a very complex issue, I’m going to tell you what I think is a large part of the reason for this decline.

Xerox machines.

Yup. Mimeographing was popular in the 70’s, and then came the ubiquitous copier. Now, instead of having to copy notes off of a chalkboard, students often have the notes handed to them, already copied. Instead of having to write questions and answers out of a textbook, they are provided with the ever-popular worksheet, made possible by Xerox. Instead of copying math problems off of the board and figuring them out on paper, they are provided with, yep, worksheets that often have part of the problem already completed.

I could go on and on.

I have so many students who I believe have brilliant minds, but they cannot read or write at what would have been considered a third grade level 40 years ago. Why should they know how to write? They haven’t ever had to do it, at least not in an academic manner, aside from the occasional research paper that they either purchase, plagerize or painstakingly write with one hand while the other is being held. They are, however, quite proficient at writing with MySpace syntax, proving that practice makes perfect.

Here is what I see many of my students do if I give them a typical fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice worksheet. They flip through the book, looking for keywords as fast as possible. They are impatient. They bubble in the correct choice and turn in the paper 10 minutes later. It may be correct. Did it help them learn to read or write? No. Did they learn the content? No way!

I keep thinking about schools in economically depressed parts of the world that manage to turn out students who speak, read and write proficiently in more than one language. Lots of times, all these schools have to work with is chalkboards. Many are lucky to have books! But still, learning occurs. Shoot, even in the war-torn country of Afghanistan, you can find many youth who can read the Koran and have memorized it. While this education may not exactly be comprehensive, my point is that the teaching methods have been effective. Would we have had plane-crashing fanatical terrorists attack us if mullahs had handed out Xeroxed copies of the Koran with a couple of fill in the blank exercises? If we want to cripple a country, perhaps we should send them a copier.