Schools won’t improve, a Florida teacher argues, unless there are alternative classes or activities ”for those who don’t care to learn or can’t, or won’t, let anyone else learn.” Until these needs are addressed,” writes Junie Rabin in the Sun Sentinel “do not expect changes in drop-out rates or second-class education. Forget your headlines promulgating new accountability standards, forget “no child left behind,” forget bonuses and self-serving plaques on the wall.”
Rubin cites a familiar litany of issues–indifferent students who are not academically prepared, but have been passed along, for example–but the worst, she says are the disrupters “who turn the best lessons into a fiasco. Equally impossible is transferring them out. Evaluate my performance, how I inspire my students, with the addition of the new parolee whose judge decreed he either goes back to school or back to jail,” she writes.
One wonders what Ms. Rubin would make of this New York Times editorial.
Re: Ms. Rubin’s hypothetical response to the NYT editorial: apples and oranges. Disrupters don’t have to be arrested in order to be appropriately dealt with. NYT is talking about bringing the criminal justice system into the picture (and certainly that is occasionally the right thing to do, when laws are being broken). Run of the mill disruption is more appropriately dealt with by a whole range of actions that are undertaken by the school — discipline, restorative justice, and as Ms. Rubin points out is not used nearly often enough, removal of the disrupter from the class.
The Times editorial reflects serious cluelessness. It inveighs against tough measures because they’ll make the kids drop out of school. Hello? So we should let the kid wreak his anti-social behviors upon teachers and classmates –learning nothing and preventing other kids from learning anything? And this catastrophe is justified because the kid walks away with a meaningless diploma after four years of this?
It is terrible that we don’t prevent anti-social teens from getting that way; but once they’re messed up, let’s dispense with the feel-good fake cures. Keeping these kids in the classroom hoping that they’ll be cured of their dysfunction there is magical thinking.
A semi-tangential comment for which I’d appreciate feedback: I’m not sure if I can articulate this clearly, but it seems to me that one’s approach to discipline must be anchored in one of two conceptions of human nature: Hobbesian or Rousseauian. If you believe, as Hobbes does, that ALL humans are capable of the most horrendous behaviors –that any of us could have been, for example, Nazis or Hutu genocidaires had we been born in a different time and place –and that children, qua humans, have a similar potential –then you’re inclined to take a tough, no-nonsense approach to student behavior. I know it’s taboo to say this, but I have encountered students that I believe are capable of the deepest evils. I hear remarks that are so casually vicious that it chills me (particularly about Muslims). I believe, with Hobbes and Bertrand Russell, that many humans possess an innate appetite for mayhem, violence, cruelty. Adults must be clear-eyed and unromantic about this; they must protect themselves and others with stern measures –looks, words and punishments –to condition kids to stifle these impulses. They must be willing to be positively authoritarian until the children are properly civilized. Good people are MADE not born. (And, very tangentially, Obama must be similarly tough with amoral banks and Big Pharma; he underestimates THEIR capacity for evil.)
Romantics, on the other hand –and there seem to be a lot of these in America –seem to think we’re born innocent and that badness is acquired. In this view (which my superintendent seems to hold) teachers’ mean looks and punishments CAUSE meanness and violent tendencies in kids. Kids are corrupted by schooling. All that’s needed to elicit good behavior is gentle reminders, providing a good example, a few “carrots”. School would be a big love-fest if we could just get rid of grouchy teachers and replace them with peppy personable coach-types. Nazism, the Rwandan genocide, and all the other instances of human evil? Freakish aberrations. The perpetrators were almost a different SPECIES. How dare you link those atrocities with the 12 year olds in our schools! There’s no connection. We’re all born good. Preserve their innocence, stay positive, and the kids will remain good (a few innocuous bits of mischief aside).
Am I making sense? Hobbes says, “Wicked men are robust children.” Is he wrong? Should I respect the taboo and not talk about children as capable of evil? I do not hate children, or humans in general, but I am interested in thinking (and if possible speaking) the truth, even if it’s not pretty.
The diagnosis of evil is fraught with peril, assuming we agree on the meaning of evil. It’s sometimes impossible to tell whether someone is evil or ignorant.
At a practical level, it may not matter very often. A kid who refuses to respect the classroom should be removed from it.This, too, can be a form of teaching.
There are indeed a lot of romantic notions of children in American education. I would almost argue that many educators do not want to teach children, they actually want to be children again themselves.
A “scare-you-mentary” (Alexander Russo’s term) entitled The War on Kids is currently making the rounds through the talk shows. The argument seems to be that zero tolerance policies are turning our schools into prisons. The trailer features John Taylor Gotto, which suggests that this is an “unschooling” piece. In any event, the existence of such a film drives home an important point. Sometimes, the schools just can’t win.
I often thought school was as much a process of domesticating kids as it was educating them. Part of my job was to get them all to conform to some semblance of normal behavior as it was to provide them with a core knowledge (my) curriculum. While my priority was always the cognitive domain, the affective domain would always rear its ugly head to some degree, necessitating attention.
MLU,
I don’t use “evil” in the theological sense. “Vile”, “inhumane”, “heartless” would all work as synonyms for me, more or less. I agree that ignorance and evil are connected; that’s one reason I’m such an ardent supporter of a robust liberal arts curriculum –our kids need to KNOW about humanity and the world so they’re less easy prey for the fascist demagogues that are afoot.
Matt,
I totally agree that there’s some weird psychology going on with some of our teacher colleagues. I can think of a couple who really dislike adults and want children to be their society, not just their students. And I’ve known some who seem loathe to BE the adult. I can think of a couple who had rocky relationships with their dads in middle school who seem determined to replay the family drama in a more harmonious way. Not that this is totally pathological, but I worry when schooling becomes more about therapy (for teacher and kids) than about civilizing students.
Apropos of my last post: another way of posing the question is this: can we view school as a microcosm of the polis/ the state? If so, wouldn’t everything Plato, Machiavelli, Rousseau and company have written about the political problem have a lot of relevance to how we think about power dynamics in schools? I mean, these guys write about the challenges of governing adult humans. Does the fact that the humans we try to govern are immature nullify the relevance of these philosophers’ teachings? Am I crazy to constantly think about Machiavelli when confronting a class? Does anyone else out there who knows The Prince well see what I’m talking about?
Ben, I think you articulate the issue very well. I have been concerned all my life with the Rousseauian
perspective. I think it is very unrealistic and it does real damage. My thoughts were crystallized in my youth by one book in particular, African Genesis, by Robert Ardrey. His main concern was arguing that human evolution occurred in Africa, not Asia. I suspect that argument became moot decades ago. But a secondary thesis of his book was about what he called the “romantic fallacy”. He talked a lot about Rousseau. Since then (the 1960’s) I have been sensitized to instances in which ineffective and counterproductive ideas and practices have flourished under the protective umbrella of good intentions and lofty sounding ideals.
But I would be wary of thinking in polar terms. I think most people would find themselves somewhere in a middle ground. They have some recognition of bad side of human nature, but they also feel a considerable attraction to an idealistic view of human nature. In my experience I have many times seen teachers, and sometimes parents, act ineffectively or counterproductively with students, convinced that their good intentions were all that counted. I would be inclined to think the best approach to combating this is not to talk in broad philosophical terms, but in more practical terms.
So what can we do to get people to be more realistic? I don’t have a very good answer. But I think it makes sense to have some intolerance for bad ideas hiding under the masquerade of good intentions. When someone says students would behave if we just brought out the best in them by adopting all the failed schemes of a century of progressive education, I tend to see red. I think there are times when we should state loudly and clearly that good intentions, wishful thinking, and lofty rhetoric are not enough. Indeed they should sometimes be attacked directly. They cause people to fail to deal with problems that must be dealt with if we are not to suffer bad consequences in the future.
And in this context may I heartily recommend “The Reluctant Disciplinarian” by Gary Rubenstein.
Keep talking sense.
I find my mind will not let go of this Hobbesian/Rousseauian dichotomy. I mentioned that I thought progress would come more by giving attention to practical matters than by thinking in philosophical duality terms. However it occurs to me that maybe the philosophical duality needs attention, for this reason. I think it is somewhat of a cultural or diplomatic imperative to let Rousseau win by default in many cases. We want to be seen as civilized, caring, sensitive human beings. To challenge the Rousseauian fantasy, when not absolutely necessary at least, may seem impolite. So maybe we do need to do battle philosophically.
But back to the practical. At the heart of this issue, as a practical matter at least, is motivation. Motivation in the classroom needs to be understood, and I don’t think the ed school mentality has ever even begun to scratch the surface on this. But in an article on my web site, “Motivation And The Willingness To Be Taught”, I attempt to do exactly that. It’s at http://www.brianrude.com/mot-wt.htm .
Brian, thanks for engaging this raving lunatic! I think you’re right that it’s a “cultural or diplomatic imperative to let Rousseau win by default”. I actually feel quite bad writing what I’ve written and saying what I say at work, as if I’ve really gone beyond the pale. But, dammit, why can’t we have an honest debate?
I will try to check out your piece on motivation, and thanks for the tip about Rubenstein’s book.
Quiz. Which famous XXth Century American wrote these words?…
“Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream…”