One of the busted wheels on this train we call “public education” – Empowerment

So a couple of articles caught my attention in my twitter feed as I was battling another bout with insomnia. The first (from the New York Times) was about a new anti-bullying law that’s being enacted in New Jersey that’s vague and poorly thought out which will only lead to an exodus of many caring adults and wasting taxpayers’ money. The second was a Washington Post article about a gym teacher for FCPS who is still trying to recoup his legal fees after being acquitted of slanderous and untrue allegations of sexual misconduct with two sixth grade girls.

It boils down to empowerment. In all walks of life, we struggle with it. Among our peers, we wish for our views to be understood and acted upon in a positive manner. In the workplace, we desire respect for our ideas and validation of the work that we put in. We see this struggle in sports when an athlete aspires to be the team captain. It’s there in the doctor’s office when the patient declares his desire for a second opinion or defiantly faces the admonishment due from not following his prescribed dietary regimen. Some of you know the powerless feeling when you feel that your car is singled out in the crowd for speeding and there really isn’t a way to take care of the ticket. Inevitably, in life, you come across situations where you feel that you are not empowered to do something that is being asked of you to do.

I really feel that American society has become a society of advocates, representatives, spokespersons, etc. We ask for others to fight our fight. But why do we ask them to do so? Because we feel that they have the personal resources (the empowerment) to execute what we fail to see in ourselves the capability of doing. This is very prevalent when it comes to our children. The beings whom we believe are incapable of standing up for themselves until they become adults. Now that’s a funny thing…what does it mean to be an adult?

More and more “adults” aged 18-35 are living with their parents. How many of you knew what a Roth IRA was when you were 21? How many of you felt that you were completely independent of your parents when you became of legal age to vote in this country? Are any of you actually expecting your parents to fork over the down payment for your first home? Of those of you who say yes, do you have any intention of allowing your parents to move in when they’re infirm and need the care? How old were you when learned about other insurance plans other than health, auto, home and life? What does it mean to be an adult?

I consider myself fortunate to have the perspective I do on this subject. Many of you do as well but don’t look at it quite the same way. I have a friend who was a student of mine. I taught him some music and helped him with college choices a bit. Now he’s graduated and I consider him to be one of my peers. I have another peer who also recently graduated from college. Except that when I first met him, he was in the first grade. I still teach him a few things but he’s accomplished a lot and teaches me new things about a subject I know pretty well. I went on a date with a girl who is 7 years my junior. Taking a 6th grader to my senior prom would have been disgusting but a little over a decade later and it’s perfectly fine. Things changed and people grew up. The more important part is that I accepted this fact.

When I was a freshman in high school, my father had a stroke. He was 51 years old and it crippled him for life. My Superman just met his invisible Doomsday. It’s not something I talk about to great lengths but the state of American education worries me enough to dredge this painful memory out for display. I was supposed to get my learner’s permit in a few months. My mom used up all over her leave from work while my dad slowly recovered. I couldn’t do a damn thing for him but help drag him around the house and go to school. My mom needed me to grow up really fast. I needed to be able to drive so my mom could go back to work and make money. I had to help my dad eat, shower, relieve himself, and get him to physical therapy (until insurance would no longer pay for it). My mom told me to just be a kid and go to school. I joined the track team because I had a lot of friends on the team and thought it would help me sort through things. No one really understood why I always ran so hard that I’d be puking my guts up during every practice but it felt like I was flying away from my worries and I would be damned if I was going to ever let that stop. I didn’t do particularly well in school that year and I would have to spend the rest of my years trying to make up for it. It’s a lot of emotional weight for a 15 year old kid.

My story isn’t unique. My burden wasn’t too much for me to bear because I had to be strong for other people. Those people expected me to be strong. When I look into the eyes of high school students, I see that same sort of fire. 15 years old means they’re a lot closer to being allowed to die for their country than having their diaper changed and being burped. They want to be adults but who do they have in their lives to help them understand how to be adults? Parents who are madly trying to pay the bills, organizing wholesome activities to pack their kids’ resumes for college applications, trying to recapture their carefree college lifestyles on the weekends, and feeling powerless at their day jobs? Teachers who are expected to make sure every student passes their school’s curriculum demands with less disciplinary power, less funding, larger classrooms, and need administrative permission for nearly every inane daily activity down to wiping their own ass when they get of the toilet? (My sarcasm here is only a hair’s breadth from the truth) Or perhaps the millionaire’s trophy wife that gets to parade around on TV?

Of course bullying isn’t traditional. How about the scrawny brat picking on that bigger kid? Bullying is about social dominance. Size doesn’t matter when you’ve got a mob of friends behind you. Kids learn to exercise all sorts of power. The ability of their body to move in ways others can’t or of their mind to grasp complex concepts faster than others or the charisma to endear people to you better than others. Bullying is about exerting a sort of dominance over another in a manner that is demeaning and manipulative. It’s predatory behavior and it doesn’t have to be individual. It often takes more than one lioness to take down a wildebeest, or even a large zebra.

In some cases, we worry about the system because bad apples have spoiled the bunch. I once worked with a guy who is a generation older than I am. We were talking about how the social mores in the education field have changed and he mentioned an interesting story to me. When he was in high school in the late 60s, it was unheard of to have an openly gay teacher employed at a school. However, it was well-known among the students if any girl were developing a romantic relationship with one of the teachers (young girl, male teacher). If the administration knew, they kept quiet. But this wasn’t an uncommon thing. It certainly happens quite frequently at the colleges and universities, even today. Some times it’s a matter of finding someone else to do your dirty work for you. Like a cuckoo bird that lays its eggs in another bird’s nest to have its chicks raised by them. If you’ve ever seen a kid cleverly provoke someone else into a compromising situation…it’s devious. Like watching Jerry trick Tom into doing something that irritates Spike into beating Tom up (if you don’t get the Tom and Jerry reference, you’re too young to understand the other references behind this rant). The manipulation has worked two ways but who really benefits and loses in the situation?

So I’m sure if you’ve come this far, you’re still wondering how I’m supposed to tie all of this together. That’s the problem. It’s not a simple fix. We’re talking about a system of raising children into adults. People develop at different rates. The difficulty is how we discipline and how we approach it. For those of you who believe that discipline is solely the responsibility of the parent then I ask you to think about times when you’ve seen other children act out in manner that seemed inappropriate for their age. I’ve seen teachers cursed out by 12 year old kids. I’ve had students curse at me and try to physically intimidate me. I’m not a violent person but if ANY person wants to use physical intimidation as a means of asserting dominance over me then they should also know that looks can be deceiving. If someone wants to live by the sword, they should know exactly how they can die by it too.

I used a curse word in a high school classroom. I used it to retain their attention and in a manner to instill confidence in them for a standardized test that intimidated many of them. You can ask any of those students who they would give credit for teaching them the most about that subject and I would be shocked if they didn’t say my name. The pass rate was up 15% from the previous year, that’s significant enough of an improvement for me to assert that my method, although brusque, was effective. I began by treating them like adults, in the manner a manager would treat his employee staff because I still had to be the authority figure in the classroom. There were plenty of behavior problems as they adjusted and I had to adjust to the environment. Most of those kids have my love and respect because they consciously took the step to become more like the adult I hope they will be. I still want them to have fun in their spare time but to realize their full potential when they work and to get the work done first.

Discipline and self-control come this sort of give and take. Children are excellent observers and realize when a “responsibility” given to them is a mere trifle or something of merit. So what if there is a job that has merit but is seen as trifling? Then it’s up to the taskmaster to explain its importance. If it can’t be done effectively then the task doesn’t actually have this perceived merit. The irony is that the explanation is often more complex and abstruse but if the attempt is made, the meaning is often gleaned. Once again, if it isn’t then it’s a teaching moment. Now it becomes more difficult when instead of 10 tasks to divide between 20 students, you have 12 tasks to divide between 32. Just taking the time to go through the explanations becomes an arduous task alone. So you see how stopping bullying behavior goes so much deeper than just telling people to tell on others?

Advertisements
2011
08/31
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Ethos
Morality
Relationships
Society
TAGS








1 comment

Soup’s on!

I love French food. Actually, I’m using that as a general term for western European cuisine but I love it all the same. I like the separate courses and the care taken in preparing the separate parts that come together to form a meal. For me, this concept of food is exotic and fun. For many of you, this is home cooking with familiar flavors and forms…

Forms? Yes, because the delivery system for you to mentally accept something as an edible food is startlingly narrow-minded. If it’s not a noodle, layered between two pieces of bread (or wrapped up in a flour tortilla), or compartmentalized on a platter with an array of sauces…it’s weird and you’re not going to touch it for fear that it’s going to contaminate you. Not only that, there are so many wonderful food items out there that you aren’t willing to try because it’s not what you think it’s supposed to be.

Except for soup. AHHHH the world’s most basic cuisine utilizing one of our most essential needs – water. It’s ingenious. You could boil away any nasty germs waiting to get you from a slightly unpotable water source and still nourish your body’s essential need for H2O. These days, it’s great diet food since you fill up on a light broth instead of extra cheese and chili on your poorly deep fried fries. (Yes, there are good and bad ways to deep fry foods and we generally do it the unhealthy way)

I remember watching Tyler’s Ultimate where he went to San Francisco to meet Martin Yan who taught him how to make Sichuan-style Spicy Eggplant. Martin Yan quipped about how a 16oz steak would be one meal in America while in China it would be part of several meals spread out over a week. Since I also believe that necessity is the mother of invention, Asian cultures have found ways to make vegetable soup bases that are much more satisfying than your best vegetable broth. I ascribe to Alton Brown‘s definition of stocks and broths, so please don’t suggest that vegetable stock is better, it doesn’t exist.

The Asian foodscape is much more diverse than you would think. Then again so are their languages, history and sub-cultures but we’re here to stick with the food. The Japanese have miso, of which you’re probably familiar with if you’ve ever had sushi. Koreans have doenjang. It’s a byproduct of the process used to make soy sauce. This stuff takes advantage of one of the most beautiful processes in our culinary language – fermentation. The foods that I see people go crazy over, usually involve fermentation (take that! Monsieur Louis Pasteur). Beer, wine, cheese, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi…all because of the wonderful yeasts that help us breakdown food further.

So enough of that lecture, here’s the nuts and bolts of using some ancient processed food stuffs, that are quite nutritious, into some killer soups.

I’ve always loved coarse bitter greens. The problem for most people is that they’re…well, bitter. Ever had Italian wedding soup? That’s escarole, a bitter green, and it wouldn’t taste nearly as good without it because it would just be a mundane chicken-meatball soup. I haven’t been to a grocery store in the DC area that sells kale for more than $1.50 per bunch. Even the fully organic stuff. Unless you’re my friend, and the legend, Chad Hamilton then you probably couldn’t eat an entire bunch in one day. Let alone one sitting. I love mustard greens, dandelion greens, and perilla leaves. They’re vitamin-packed and a great boost for your dietary fiber needs.

Since I want to harness all that nutritious goodness, soup is great. The broth is more satisfying when you know it’s better than taking a silly pill that doesn’t have enough body-friendly vitamin levels to give you the benefits they claim are on the bottle. It actually delivers on all that nutrient goodness.

Before I go on, I want to link to one more Korean food item – Gochujang. This is a paste made with ground chiles and glutinous rice. You’re more likely to find this in the Asian section of your large-chain supermarket than doenjang.

So here’s the general idea about making soup, my way. Variety. Go to the grocery story and pick three things from the produce aisle. Try parsnips, fennel, and Swiss chard. Go find a meat that you like but it’s not necessary. I like anchovies, eggs, beef short ribs or pork belly. And look for Japanese somen noodles or, if you’re in the Asian market, this. Take the stuff home and get out the three things you will need to cook anything I generally make – a pot/wok, cutting board and a chef’s knife. In general, you want three parts veggie to one part meat. Cut the harder veggies and land-animal meats into thin strips. Leaves get cut into 1-inch chunks. I tend to leave fish in an entire piece or fillet. I also consider a half handful of mirepoix to be a great flavor enhancer so feel free to throw that in as well (The french food lover in me almost always keeps those veggies chopped and ready to use in my fridge).

Saute the firm veggies first in a little oil (your choice but I prefer sesame, for flavor, or sunflower, for it’s lack of flavor)  until they’re soft. Then add a small spoonful of doenjang and gochujang into the mix and stir a bit. Deglaze with a little water and then add any meats and then the leafy greens on top then cover. The boiling liquid will cook the meat and the steam will help wilt the greens. Once the leaves breakdown a bit bring add water to the level you want for a soup and once it’s boiling again drop in the noodles. 3 minutes later, you’re ready to eat. This rarely takes me longer than 20 minutes to make and I usually add my meats frozen into the soup (Take that! Rachael Ray).

Let me know how it goes!

2011
08/29
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
TAGS









Leave a comment

The right and wrong ways to fail

Perhaps I’m hamstringing the kids that I teach. I tell them that it’s okay to make a mistake.

Play a scale…okay, the fourth note was supposed to be flat…don’t look so down, just try it again and play B-flat instead of B-natural…there you go! That was good. Now let’s play it with both hands together…wait, before you start, remember that your left hand fingerings are the same as with the other scales but your right hand is different…no, it’s okay. Try it again but take it a bit more slowly…there you go, keep your focus and play it again…no, don’t play it faster, just the same as last time…okay, again…good, now let’s speed it up…see that was much better.

That’s pretty much the dialogue I have had for every child I’ve taught to play the the F-major scale on the piano. Some of those ellipses were much longer pauses with several mistakes made. Yes, that little monologue sometimes takes up 15 minutes of a lesson. A paternalistic business manager would say that my method is flawed and that there’s a better way for me to teach a child how to play the F-major scale. But you know what I’ve never had to do? Teach it again.

This method is a much more lenient version of piano instruction than from decades past with more accomplished pianists. Yes, there were piano teachers that would snap a stick on the back of your hands if you made a mistake. It may not have been technical but more an artistic deviation that was not compellingly executed. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong or harmful in the way those teachers taught piano performance. Mistakes on the performing stage are rarely forgiven.

Michael Jordan played in the NBA for six seasons before he won an NBA title. He was prolific when he played but never got to the finals until he led the Bulls to the first of his six championship titles in the 1990-1991 season. He had stiff competition from the Detroit Pistons in those early years of his career. The crowds loved him but didn’t think he could get past the Pistons via a superb solo effort. However, he never looked back nor seemed to have a setback since he got past that demon of a competitive roadblock to championship glory with the help of a powerful core group including Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant.

LeBron James made it to the NBA finals in the fourth season of his NBA career. The youngest player to reach 10,000 career points. Although he didn’t win the title in his seventh season like Jordan did, he has still had quite an impressive showing. However, his “failure” is looked at with scorn because of the expectations placed upon him. This further aggravated by the dramatized announcement of his move to Miami. Where despite have another strong season, fell short of winning the title.

Why is Jordan’s failure to win acceptable and LeBron’s failure to win something to look at with contempt and/or pity?

Lindsay Lohan has trouble with the law like a teenager has trouble with acne. She’s essentially a felon. There are people who have served years in prison for the DAYS she’s spent there while having done nothing as severe as she has done. Robert Downey Jr. needs to sit her down and do an intervention. Then again, he should probably do something similar for Charlie Sheen.

I apparently chose the wrong major because no one will believe that the study of music encompasses much more than just entertaining performance aspects. I’ve researched the history and culture of many foreign countries. Developing foreign language skills led to acquiring a second degree and learning more about politics and international relations.

I failed in that I chose to enter the secondary mortgage marketing field at the same time as the mortgage market crash. Yet those traders for Drexel Burnham who were at the heart (but not the figureheads) of the insider trading scandals were absorbed by the big Wall St. investment banks.

I didn’t fail when I got a DUI. WHY? I changed my lifestyle afterward. I took steps to be more responsible about my drinking habits. The penal system worked for me but that doesn’t matter. I failed in that I didn’t cover up my mistakes but rather openly admitted them.

We live in a society that demands perfection. Once an emotional connection is made then the frailties may be revealed but not beforehand. The US will never see another Ulysses Grant because an known alcoholic would never be trusted.

You can fail but only in the right way.

2011
08/13
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

Crash dieting

I broke the 200 lbs mark again so I decided that I need to lose some weight again. It also made me think about the current debt situation.

Monetary systems whose currencies are adjusted by market valuations have a risk. The only way to improve the value of the currency is the improve the world perception of that currency. How does this happen? Enterprises that function under the purview of where that currency is the medium of trade collectively make up the perception of that value. In the US, we have the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

So the investors of the world, including investors in the US, see the production of those companies. How much influence does Cisco have in the world of technology? How is 3M doing in their endeavors to produce their products? Their valuation of this average plays a role in how the world values the American dollar. The fun part is trying to predict the future.

In 2004 there was a tremendous undersea earthquake that resulted in a tsunami that wrecked much of coastal India, nearly all of southeast Asia and even reached parts of Africa. The average person thinks “OH NO! What a tragedy!” and continue their regularly scheduled activities without much further ado. The pharmaceutical and medical supply companies are licking their chops in anticipation of the humanitarian efforts that will go forth to bring aid to those suffering people. Government officials and journalists are preparing statements or booking plane tickets to help sort out the mess or make a name for themselves.

And then there’s this “pit” in Chicago. This isn’t an ordinary group of thinkers. There are similar groups of people all over the world in every major financial center of every country. But as far any American need be concerned, it’s in Chi-town. The Chicago Board of Trade, or CBOT, is where most of the commodities trading is done in the US. If you watched Trading Places with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd, you were led to believe that in the pits of Wall St. is where the major stuff (in regards to commodities such as OJ) takes place. You were mistaken. It’s at the CBOT where pork bellies, orange juice, sugar and so many other commodities are truly valuated, traded and speculated upon. Wall St. is the happy hunting ground of stock and bond trading/speculation.

Anyway, so what is this thinker doing? He’s starting to buy up as much rice as he can possibly get his hands upon. Why? Well…do you have a tetra or a goldfish? Go buy a big container of salt, pour it into your tank and then shut off the filter. Come back in a day and you’ll know what happened to swaths of rice paddies all over Asia. This is akin to the Dust Bowl of 1930s America or the Irish potato famine in the mid 1800s. Except that we can fix this sooner through modern agriculture recovery efforts. But that’s still a lot of ruined food.

So what does this have to do with my diet? Or the current US economic debacle? Well, this valuation system that I’ve just described is how your grandparents retired. They invested money into 401K and IRA plans offered by various banks and funds (hedge, mutual, etc). Those people took the money, knowing that they had at least 20 years to play around with it , and made their bets on the market values. Essentially they borrowed money from “Joe the Plumber” and offered to give back the money with interest gained. The government does a similar thing. They borrow money from those banks (not necessarily American ones either) in the form of Treasury bills, bonds and notes.

That CBOT commodities trader? Made a fortune selling the rice back as the demand shot up. If you recall, for a while, there were limits to how many bags of rice you could buy from Costco. Now seriously, what American household (that doesn’t have Asian roots) buys multiple Costco-sized bags (25lbs) of rice in one shopping trip? It’s the same mentality when gas prices shot up in 2008 with the fall of the mortgage bubble. People started driving more. I’m shooting from the hip with these next few stats because my old information mines are now charging to look up historical data. Currently crude oil is trading about $80 per barrel. Gas prices in northern VA are around $3.80 per gallon. At the height of the crude oil shortage frenzy (summer 2008 – fall 2009), crude was trading nearly $170 per barrel while gas prices were sitting around $4.10 per gallon. So you’ve guessed it, Exxon-Mobil is making even more money now than they when they were making record profits during the market crash and subsequent recession.

Now the tax code hasn’t changed significantly to raise the cost of producing a gallon of gasoline. So why hasn’t gasoline prices gone down? I know it would certainly help the economy.

So I slowly inch back towards my original thought about the debt situation. We’ve lost our AAA rating. It now costs the country more money to trade in these valuations. Of course there are several other global economic problems that are allowing this loss in credit rating to keep our markets much more stable than would normally be the case. However, it goes to show you the perception of needing money.

My body needs proteins, fats/carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and water to subsist. Lately my diet had been fulfilling me and I was growing. However, there were excesses being stored up and needed to be addressed. Now if I were to go on a diet where my caloric intake drastically reduced, I’d be rather miserable. But how drastic? Let’s say my body is like our economic situation. It just had a heart attack recently (i.e. the market crash). My body is trying to recover and of course I need to go on a diet but if you force my body to immediately cannibalize the stores of fat that I have by putting me on a diet where I have a significantly reduced caloric intake, you’re going to force some of my bodily functions to become erratic or possibly shut down. I’m sorry but that’s unacceptable.

This is the debt ceiling. Debt, in our monetary and economic system, is a necessary aspect to the proper function of our markets. In order for my diet to work, I still need to consume fats. Just less of them and also get some exercise. In regards to the marketplace that means utilizing more of the workforce. But we’ll see how this all pans out…

2011
08/09
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Uncategorized
Leave a comment

The Iconic Man – Part 4

Defy: transitive verb, 1: to challenge to do something considered impossible, 2: to confront with assured power of resistance, 3: to resist attempts at

Defiance

LIKE ALL THINGS artful, style requires balance – in this case, between respecting the rules and blowing them off. Style believes in principles of color and cut, but would betray them in a flash to claim the room. And there’s a reason why this is especially true of men’s style: We become most exciting when we set our own course. When Fred Astaire used a necktie as a belt, he knew it wasn’t done, except for the fact that he did it. Style requires both a sense of custom and a sense of “screw you.” – (Taken from Men’s Health, Sept 2004 issue)

During my sophomore year of college, my roommate found a westerns marathon on some channel and I couldn’t get him off the couch for days because of it. More recently, I started watching John Wayne movies after seeing an episode of NCIS that had to do with a decorated Marine who fought at Iwo Jima during WWII. The wild West was won by defiant men. Their exact actions would probably not be condoned in today’s society but their spirit is certainly desired.

We’ve valued that same spirit in many ages. Leonidas and the names of the 300 Spartan warriors who battled at Thermopylae are the only names ever to be recorded upon a monument.The founding fathers of the United States whose powerful movement to take what they considered to be the domain of all men from the most powerful empire in the world at that time. Robert Falcon Scott who defied the horrendous cold conditions of Antarctica to find the South Pole. Bruce Lee refused to kow-tow to the insular Chinese population in America and taught kung-fu to whomever wished to learn.

Defiance is tricky. We don’t want to face it when it impedes our progress toward personal goals. The business manager doesn’t want defiance among his/her employees. Yet that business manager may have defied his/her previous employer and now at the helm of a business that models the reason for that very defiance. Without defiance, Chicago wouldn’t have Lou Malnati’s deep dish pizza nor would we have the Beatles because Decca execs were saying that “…guitar music is on the way out.”

2011
07/12
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Ethos
Society
TAGS








Leave a comment

The stress perspective – Part 2

On the day I turned 30, a surreal feeling came over me. I knew that I wasn’t as fit as I was when I was 20. In some ways I don’t have the energy that I’ve been accustomed to having. When I lived in France, I read Milan Kundera‘s The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

One of the themes I felt the story portrayed is of our own self-sabotage. It creates emotional weight that holds us down like a heavy blanket. But the twist is that we actually enjoy this limitation. Our choices are pared down and simplifies our life. However, our joy in life is tainted by the emotional weight that we carry to keep ourselves “safe” from making grave errors. In exchange for a little control over the direction of our lives, we sacrifice a bit of the unadulterated joy that comes from living life in the moment.

So life is once again a balancing act and I’ve focused too much on unloading a certain weight. I miss the feeling of flight. This may be the root to the curse of intelligence…we’ve clipped our own wings and tethered our feathers. However, trying to shake off that one big chain has caused me to kick up enough crap to weigh me down further.

Of course now the jumble in my mind is tumbling further into chaos so I’ll just stop here for now…

2011
07/07
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Morality
Relationships
TAGS





1 comment

The stress perspective – Part 1

So I need to vent and get some thoughts out…

*Sorry about not keeping up with the Iconic Man series. My copy of Men’s Health is sitting on my computer right now and I want to keep going but a lot has happened in the past few weeks.

I’ve been reading Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein and it has already rocketed into one of my top 10 most influential books. The miniature essays on juvenile delinquency, moral instinct, market value, communism/capitalism are astounding and I’m only halfway through the novel. I feel like I could teach an entire semester long class on just this book. Read this book. It’ll change the way you think about government and society. Don’t watch the movies, they have nothing in common with the book except that the main character is Johnnie Rico.

So the first major thing on my mind is about juvenile delinquency. It’s a paradox. They are simply children who have an improperly developed moral compass. This takes form in many ways but it’s certainly evident when you consider the example of the overgrown children who ruined our economy and settling to the ground in their golden parachutes.

Find two kids. Offer them a lollipop if one of them will slap the other across the face. Give Kid A the lollipop and then hand five lollipops to the Kid B (who was slapped). The fury you’ll incite in Kid A will make you wonder what just happened. But consider that Kid B was probably only mad at himself for not slapping Kid A first. Neither side is happy but scheming about how to play the game properly. This only leads to more sinister thinking processes. We’ve now created entitlement issues because the social mores have been made ambiguous.

This is the problem with education. The societal rules are hazy. Parents don’t think their children are capable of guile when speaking to them.

“ARRRGGHHH! My teacher hates me. She can’t teach and always ignores me when I raise my hand to ask a question.”

Translation: “My teacher scolded me for doing either 1) doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing or 2) not paying attention to what she was saying and then asking a question that demonstrated I didn’t pay attention at all to what she had said.”

But that’s not how the parent sees it anymore. So I’ll see a tutoring offer and in the description “his/her teacher is inadequate” is invariably listed in some, slightly variegated, form. Don’t they know that the tutor they’re trusting to be their child’s educational refuge is 90% likely to be less qualified by No Child Left Behind standards than their classroom teacher? How many of them realize that the tutoring center is rarely equipping those tutors with anything but a connection and then pocketing 60% or more of the tutoring fees? The only difference is that the child has no choice but to listen to what the tutor has to say. If that child would actively listen in class and ask pointed questions then the tutor would be unnecessary. But who is going to teach that child such a skill? Not a parent that hasn’t done a proper job of developing their child’s moral compass. They’re too self-absorbed in their own selfish pursuits to take the extra second to imagine a way to engage their child into whatever activity they’re doing.

Oh but wait, those are adult activities. Don’t tell me that you’re going to educate 16 year old kid about driving a 3000+ lbs mass of metal, glass and volatile chemicals or about the social and physical ins and outs (pun intended) of sexual intercourse yet still call them a “child” around whom you can’t drop a curse word or take a firm disciplinary stance that causes them to resort to crying in emotional frustration for being denied what they want but didn’t earn.

I taught some of those kids how to blow up a watermelon with a water bottle and dry ice. I taught them how to make shampoo and soap with food grade lye and vegetable oil. I taught them the danger of mixing ammonia and bleach together because it would create toxic chlorine gas. I could have taught them how to make ice cream with milk, sugar, ice and salt. I also could have taught them a few ways on how to attack the Sicilian Dragon defense in chess.

If any of those kids took those skills and played a prank on the principal that “kid” is no longer a “child” because of the watermelon s/he has to clean out of her/his car. That “child” is now a vandal who needs to be treated like an adult. Society cries out for people to be great. A lion is awe inspiring for the violence it is capable of. A leader is awe inspiring for the charisma he utilizes to emotionally drive the masses. A lion cub can’t learn to be fearsome from a clawless/toothless adult lion.

I offended a “cub” who was accustomed to receiving special treatment. I did this because I needed to teach several others how to truly be “lions” because they were going to end up being unable to keep up with the pride. That one needed to be scared and I refused to give up on those others. I lost that job. It still hurts. I miss those kids dearly.

This is why I can’t be a teacher.

2011
07/06
POSTED BY
CATEGORY
Education
Society
TAGS







Leave a comment
Advertisements