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Why the United States Is Destroying Its Education System
A nation that destroys its systems of education, degrades its public information, guts its public libraries and turns its airwaves into vehicles for cheap, mindless amusement becomes deaf, dumb and blind. It prizes test scores above critical thinking and literacy. It celebrates rote vocational training and the singular, amoral skill of making money. It churns out stunted human products, lacking the capacity and vocabulary to challenge the assumptions and structures of the corporate state. It funnels them into a caste system of drones and systems managers. It transforms a democratic state into a feudal system of corporate masters and serfs.
Teachers, their unions under attack, are becoming as replaceable as minimum-wage employees at Burger King. We spurn real teachers—those with the capacity to inspire children to think, those who help the young discover their gifts and potential—and replace them with instructors who teach to narrow, standardized tests. These instructors obey. They teach children to obey. And that is the point. The No Child Left Behind program, modeled on the “Texas Miracle,” is a fraud. It worked no better than our deregulated financial system. But when you shut out debate these dead ideas are self-perpetuating.
Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.
“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job. Up until very recently, the principal of a school was something like the conductor of an orchestra: a person who had deep experience and knowledge of the part and place of every member and every instrument. In the past 10 years we’ve had the emergence of both [Mayor] Mike Bloomberg’s Leadership Academy and Eli Broad’s Superintendents Academy, both created exclusively to produce instant principals and superintendents who model themselves after CEOs. How is this kind of thing even legal? How are such ‘academies’ accredited? What quality of leader needs a ‘leadership academy’? What kind of society would allow such people to run their children’s schools? The high-stakes tests may be worthless as pedagogy but they are a brilliant mechanism for undermining the school systems, instilling fear and creating a rationale for corporate takeover. There is something grotesque about the fact the education reform is being led not by educators but by financers and speculators and billionaires.”
Teachers, under assault from every direction, are fleeing the profession. Even before the “reform” blitzkrieg we were losing half of all teachers within five years after they started work—and these were people who spent years in school and many thousands of dollars to become teachers. How does the country expect to retain dignified, trained professionals under the hostility of current conditions? I suspect that the hedge fund managers behind our charter schools system—whose primary concern is certainly not with education—are delighted to replace real teachers with nonunionized, poorly trained instructors. To truly teach is to instill the values and knowledge which promote the common good and protect a society from the folly of historical amnesia. The utilitarian, corporate ideology embraced by the system of standardized tests and leadership academies has no time for the nuances and moral ambiguities inherent in a liberal arts education. Corporatism is about the cult of the self. It is about personal enrichment and profit as the sole aim of human existence. And those who do not conform are pushed aside.
“It is extremely dispiriting to realize that you are in effect lying to these kids by insinuating that this diet of corporate reading programs and standardized tests are preparing them for anything,” said this teacher, who feared he would suffer reprisals from school administrators if they knew he was speaking out. “It is even more dispiriting to know that your livelihood depends increasingly on maintaining this lie. You have to ask yourself why are hedge fund managers suddenly so interested in the education of the urban poor? The main purpose of the testing craze is not to grade the students but to grade the teacher.”
“I cannot say for certain—not with the certainty of a Bill Gates or a Mike Bloomberg who pontificate with utter certainty over a field in which they know absolutely nothing—but more and more I suspect that a major goal of the reform campaign is to make the work of a teacher so degrading and insulting that the dignified and the truly educated teachers will simply leave while they still retain a modicum of self-respect,” he added. “In less than a decade we been stripped of autonomy and are increasingly micromanaged. Students have been given the power to fire us by failing their tests. Teachers have been likened to pigs at a trough and blamed for the economic collapse of the United States. In New York, principals have been given every incentive, both financial and in terms of control, to replace experienced teachers with 22-year-old untenured rookies. They cost less. They know nothing. They are malleable and they are vulnerable to termination.”
The demonizing of teachers is another public relations feint, a way for corporations to deflect attention from the theft of some $17 billion in wages, savings and earnings among American workers and a landscape where one in six workers is without employment. The speculators on Wall Street looted the U.S. Treasury. They stymied any kind of regulation. They have avoided criminal charges. They are stripping basic social services. And now they are demanding to run our schools and universities.
“Not only have the reformers removed poverty as a factor, they’ve removed students’ aptitude and motivation as factors,” said this teacher, who is in a teachers union. “They seem to believe that students are something like plants where you just add water and place them in the sun of your teaching and everything blooms. This is a fantasy that insults both student and teacher. The reformers have come up with a variety of insidious schemes pushed as steps to professionalize the profession of teaching. As they are all businessmen who know nothing of the field, it goes without saying that you do not do this by giving teachers autonomy and respect. They use merit pay in which teachers whose students do well on bubble tests will receive more money and teachers whose students do not do so well on bubble tests will receive less money. Of course, the only way this could conceivably be fair is to have an identical group of students in each class—an impossibility. The real purposes of merit pay are to divide teachers against themselves as they scramble for the brighter and more motivated students and to further institutionalize the idiot notion of standardized tests. There is a certain diabolical intelligence at work in both of these.”
“If the Bloomberg administration can be said to have succeeded in anything,” he said, “they have succeeded in turning schools into stress factories where teachers are running around wondering if it’s possible to please their principals and if their school will be open a year from now, if their union will still be there to offer some kind of protection, if they will still have jobs next year. This is not how you run a school system. It’s how you destroy one. The reformers and their friends in the media have created a Manichean world of bad teachers and effective teachers. In this alternative universe there are no other factors. Or, all other factors—poverty, depraved parents, mental illness and malnutrition—are all excuses of the Bad Teacher that can be overcome by hard work and the Effective Teacher.”
The truly educated become conscious. They become self-aware. They do not lie to themselves. They do not pretend that fraud is moral or that corporate greed is good. They do not claim that the demands of the marketplace can morally justify the hunger of children or denial of medical care to the sick. They do not throw 6 million families from their homes as the cost of doing business. Thought is a dialogue with one’s inner self. Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience. There is a huge difference, as Socrates understood, between teaching people what to think and teaching them how to think. Those who are endowed with a moral conscience refuse to commit crimes, even those sanctioned by the corporate state, because they do not in the end want to live with criminals—themselves.
“It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself,” Socrates said.
Those who can ask the right questions are armed with the capacity to make a moral choice, to defend the good in the face of outside pressure. And this is why the philosopher Immanuel Kant puts the duties we have to ourselves before the duties we have to others. The standard for Kant is not the biblical idea of self-love—love thy neighbor as thyself, do unto others as you would have them do unto you—but self-respect. What brings us meaning and worth as human beings is our ability to stand up and pit ourselves against injustice and the vast, moral indifference of the universe. Once justice perishes, as Kant knew, life loses all meaning. Those who meekly obey laws and rules imposed from the outside—including religious laws—are not moral human beings. The fulfillment of an imposed law is morally neutral. The truly educated make their own wills serve the higher call of justice, empathy and reason. Socrates made the same argument when he said it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.
“The greatest evil perpetrated,” Hannah Arendt wrote, “is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”
As Arendt pointed out, we must trust only those who have this self-awareness. This self-awareness comes only through consciousness. It comes with the ability to look at a crime being committed and say “I can’t.” We must fear, Arendt warned, those whose moral system is built around the flimsy structure of blind obedience. We must fear those who cannot think. Unconscious civilizations become totalitarian wastelands.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing themselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”
179 Comments so far
Show AllThank you Chris. But you didn't say 'why', you said 'how', except one why of course is the money grabbing aspect. The real why, the direction the non-person people tactic, is to make ignorant people, because ignorant, non-thinking, or completely clueless boys and girls make good cannon fodder in war. Their mindless playing of video games gives them an education for passing drones over other countries and trying to kill bad guys that the MIC boss says is a bad guy, and , oh , ooops, I just dropped a bomb on a school Sarg...that's ok, you'll do better next time..
Nope, I don't believe for one second that there is NOT an effort to grow more soldiers. The lack of people currently not willing to join the military, the obvious backlash that would occur if a draft were started, has put the MIC whores in bed so far deep with the rest of government that they have managed to fully and completely corrupt our education system. The increase in college tuition cannot be justified against the building of huge sports complexes at practically every university...and sports, now there's a good place to get your basic training so the MIC doesn't have to waste money on that. The price of the best textbooks for learning to think, outrageous and greed of whorporates. Complete destruction of employment...no place to go, and the army will take you there...
This country is preparing its youth to attend to a massive war when the whorporates decide to have it. It could include countries you currently would not consider. But look around you. Just look. If you can't figure it out yourself, you aren't looking. I challenge Chris Hedges to go there, to look at this evil, and to educate us even further, and deeper,on the reality of this fall of empire. This is the very tactic that the government manuevered in Caldwell's 'Devil's Advocate'. I would so hope we wake up and strike this from our land before it is too late, and be the human beings her book describes in the end.
the problem with the dumbing down of america is that it has already occurred - it is not something we need to avoid - it is something we need to deal with
consider aldous huxley lecturing in 1962:
""Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows. We are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and presumably will always exist, to get people to love their servitude. This is the, it seems to me, the ultimate in malevolent revolutions."
we have a litany of chemicals in our drinking water, such as fluoride, lots of rocket fuel too oddly enough, and lots of others. some are pollutants but many are chemical sedatives aimed at destroying the cognition of the masses
as we look around at tv land we have to give them credit for putting this system in place - a system we can't even see
amerikans don't know science, english, economics, and increasingly are unable to fix their cars, change a light bulb etc
huxley believed in the notion that most folks are best used as servants for the oligarchs - hello wal mart, shout out macdonalds
they have suckered us into massive debt, endless wars, bank bailouts, and barry obummer
man did they suck us in on that one
we no longer have an economy - we have a war machine that sucks the economy dry and is offered as the only employer outside of the service economy
we have officials counting votes on their personal pc's that swing major elections for the supreme court
you know, the kind of shit that would make a third world republic blush
here we are too dumbed down to even know what embarrassment is
Dumb? What do you mean?
"huxley believed in the notion that most folks are best used as servants for the oligarchs - hello wal mart, shout out macdonalds."
Where do you get this idea from? It is not fair or accurate to Huxley, one of the most brilliant intellectuals of the 20th century. Huxley changed a lot between his early writings in the 30s and late 50s and early 60s. His early writings were elitist, but in his later writings his ideal became more democratic socialist in character. Just look at the character of Mr. Propter in After Many a Summer Dies the Swan. Were he alive he would be appalled but unsurprised at the dumbed down place Amerika has become. He visited Los Angeles in the late 20s and wrote a parody in large part based on his experience. It was called Brave New World.
he also wrote brave new world revisited in the 50's
employed by the tavistock inst http://www.tavinstitute.org/
eugenicist - racist
In 1932, Aldous Huxley wrote his dystopian novel, “Brave New World,” in which he looked at the emergence of the scientific dictatorships of the future. In his 1958 essay, “Brave New World Revisited,” Huxley examined how far the world had come in that short period since his book was published, and where the world was heading. Huxley wrote that:
In politics the equivalent of a fully developed scientific theory or philosophical system is a totalitarian dictatorship. In economics, the equivalent of a beautifully composed work of art is the smoothly running factory in which the workers are perfectly adjusted to the machines. The Will to Order can make tyrants out of those who merely aspire to clear up a mess. The beauty of tidiness is used as a justification for despotism.[1]
Huxley explained that, “The future dictator’s subjects will be painlessly regimented by a corps of highly trained social engineers,” and he quotes one “advocate of this new science” as saying that, “The challenge of social engineering in our time is like the challenge of technical engineering fifty years ago. If the first half of the twentieth century was the era of technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of social engineers.” Thus, proclaims Huxley, “The twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave New World
maybe you want to reread his books
his brother julian was another racist:
Like many biologists in the first half of the twentieth century, Huxley was a proponent of eugenics as a method of bettering society. Eugenics is a social philosophy that advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention. The goals of various groups advocating eugenics have included the creation of healthier, more intelligent people, to save society's resources, and lessen human suffering, as well as racially based goals or desires to breed for other specific qualities, such as fighting abilities. Historically, eugenics has been used as a justification for coercive state-sponsored discrimination and human rights violations, such as forced sterilization of persons who appear to have—or are claimed to have—genetic defects, the killing of the institutionalized and, in some cases, outright genocide of races perceived as inferior or undesirable.
hail britiannia
or h g wells who thought it was our duty to get rid of inferiors - both criminal and mentally deficient as a means of improving humanity
Medmedude,
I HAVE read Brave New World, and Revisited, more than once. I wrote a Master's Thesis on Brave New World. You don't seem to understand his intention with it. In the novel he was satirizing the Myth of Progress and the worship of science and technology, among other things. The novel is written as a "utopia" from a severely ironic point of view; it really more of an anti-utopia.
You have said the following falsehood about about Huxley:
"huxley believed in the notion that most folks are best used as servants for the oligarchs - hello wal mart, shout out macdonalds."
From WHAT essay in Brave New World Revisited do you get this idea? I don't think it is there. The stuff in your latest post does not support your quoted assertion above either. As for Julian Huxley he may well have been a eugenicist and a racist but he is not under discussion here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Brave_New_World_Revisited
Huxley was predicting and warning. He definitely didn't think it would be a good thing to have social engineers streamlining tyranny, haha. He would have used pleasant-sounding euphemisms and talked about Progress, if that had been his meaning.
Am I suppose to know what you mean when you put a k in America?
Why do so many posters use that spelling. I Googled the spelling and discovered it sights many references.
"Thank you Chris. But you didn't say 'why', you said 'how'"
Chris Hedges actually explained both.
How: The destruction of the education system is being done by driving good teachers away from the profession. These teachers tend to be the independent thinkers.
Why: Hedges explains: "Those who think ask questions, questions those in authority do not want asked. They remember who we are, where we come from and where we should go. They remain eternally skeptical and distrustful of power. And they know that this moral independence is the only protection from the radical evil that results from collective unconsciousness. The capacity to think is the only bulwark against any centralized authority that seeks to impose mindless obedience."
cicero, bear with me on this, since it's the first time I have tried to go beyond my rank and safe-ground of the corporate/financial/militarist Empire gaining control over our former country by merely using the power of corrupted finance capitalism to 'capture' the political sphere also.
However, Hedges's focus here on the ruling-elite Empire attacking education for the same reasons they attack the political sphere --- albeit with somewhat expanded tactics (in addition to their standard money weapon) --- strongly suggests that the single focus Empire may begin using other tools/weapons to attack the social, cultural, psychic, institutional, familial spheres of life in addition to the educational space.
It seems to me, for example, that what "externality cost dumping" is as a weapon in the corrupted economic sphere of finance capitalism to capture wealth and loot the public 'common', engendering fear of "the other" could easily be a weapon of empire in the domestic public space --- as it has proven so successful in doing abroad in the oil territories.
Using different kinetic weapon systems for targeting various soft and hard targets has long been part of Empire war plans on the physical/geographic battle-space, and it would seem that different psychological weapons systems employed to attack the targets of education, union, culture, and other social environments would not by any means be beyond the scope of an integrated Empire battle-plan against all outside the protective cocoon of Empire.
The truth that the financial sphere of Empire uses guile, stealth, deceit, and overt money-power to take over the political sphere is well established ---- by contemporary political-economic experts as diverse as Joseph Stiglitz, Yves Smith, and Paul Krugman to Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in their fabulous "Winner-Take-All Politics", Morris Berman, and Hedges himself.
But there needs to be some other discussion, both at the intellectual / academic levels and more broadly in the public space about the nature of capitalist economics in hiding the means by which the existing system is 'gamed', and which allows economic empire power to gain the false profits necessary to so easily and overwhelmingly pervert the political sphere --- which is quietly and deceitfully accomplished mainly through 'externalization', or externality cost dumping on 'others'.
There also needs to be some other discussion about the means that a 'singularity' of empire, where financial power has already 'captured' political power (as the above authors rightly state), but then goes far beyond that duality of power to likewise pervert social, cultural, educational, and psychic influences of a population, again quietly, deceitfully, and in a secret and hidden manner, in order to broaden the grip of empire on a people, and on the whole globe to further cement a monopoly of power across multiple spheres for hidden Empire --- which is a next step of diagnosing and exposing disguised empire that someone like Sheldon Wolin addresses with 'Inverted Totalitarianism'
Further, the ways that "billionaires and corporations find many hidden ways to control American politics" through the deceit of leveraging 'externalities' in the fraudulent economics of late stage and corrupt financial capitalism to fund and pervert any real politics of democracy, is very analogous to the way a fraudulent sociology of "othering" seeds a quietly perverted mind-set of hidden imperialism and sub-conscious "empire-thinking" on the masses of a militarist disposed and hyper-patriotic nation-state being subsumed into global Empire --- which is another more subtle and less exposed aspect of Empire that someone like Immanuel Wallerstein addresses.
One finds that the deeper one looks into the deceits of Empire in all spheres of life, the more one appreciates, fears, and is committed to confront a multifaceted 'Empire of Deceit'.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy over violent empire -- People's Party 2012
Global People's Anti-Empire Movement 2011/NOW
All well and good, but intellectual superficial and filled with standard assumptions. Good as far as it goes, but how far? Shift the focus to CONSCIOUSNESS and the game becomes more simple. The folks of whom you speak are of a sub-standard type of human, in terms of potential. They are primarily LEFT BRAIN with a ROOT BRAIN default, instead of FRONTAL LOBE and HEART CENTERED, in short, stunted, mostly in poor child-training, which cuts off their intuition, their inspiration, their intelligence, and their bio-mental integrity. THEN they project their own shadow onto the OTHER, and collectively agree on their intelligent wisdom, in so doing. This is mixed with their normal un-aware, sleeping, fear-greed "normal" outlook. They require reflection, and healing, which is replaced by escapism and GETTING. They are in classic terms both neurotic and anal, and very filled with cunning, envy, anxiety, and deceit. They learn to APE love in some cases, but when push-comes-to-shove, are without heart, without morals, and believe that their wounded nature is "normal". They form clubs to affirm their Normal Among themselves, and trash any who is seen as less than they are. SICK is the key word. They need humility, and this is the last thing they allow. They need ACCEPTANCE, and even when caught and put on trial, this seems never to happen. The are totally full of their false personality, and use their spirit-soul as a source of enslavement. We can pray for them. Or arrest them if able. They DO NOT deserve the positions they obtained, and are a total danger to humanity, world, history, future, and life itself. But, hey, "have a nice day." SMILE.
thank you
unfortunately, these same people lack the internal checks that prevent most of us from violently capturing and destroying the physical planet, while killing or manipulating any individuals or populations necessary to achieve...
(one of the interesting questions raised by the writings of recent soldiers is whether killing doesn't thrill...whether we all really possess such internal checks, at all, or simply go along without having them tested, that we might learn otherwise...
of course, one also has to acknowledge the very disturbing, utterly understandable, and intentionally-downplayed suicide rate among soldiers, as well...)
it is manipulation, as employed by evil, that is so critical, as it allows corruption of otherwise benign individuals, or social infrastructures...
the ultimate battle is within the soul ~ even love for another can be a major vulnerability...are we up to it?
base evil and base desire, via the possession of the physical planet and all resources, intimate knowledge of chemistry and the human psyche, and the wonders of modern technology have created a global mental, physical and financial maze, and we are but the mice being run through...
how difficult to free oneself from these inputs, much less generate one's own thinking...
one would need to free the land from those controlling...
I appreciate your words...Alan's, also...
Hedges DOES explain why, by showing how the "bubble-test" system of "education" is designed to produce obedient drones not capable of critical thinking nor self-reflection and self-respect, but perfectly-adapted workers for the corporatocracy and willing and/or desperate "volunteers" to be cannon fodder for the Empire's increasing and endless resource wars across the globe.
Such an indoctination system of faux education works perfectly with a corporate media-saturated culture where media are no more than delivery vehicles for corporatist-militarist propaganda and the selling of unnecessary gadgets, polluting cars, and obesity-producing food.
TV, Cable, movies, iPhones, iPads, Facebook, Twitter, and all other such distractions enable the "bubble-test" indoctrinated worker-drones to stay disconnected from reality and the true causes of their own discontent as well as the true causes of political/economic/social injustice and catastrophic climate chaos.
I just sent this letter to my boss at a state university. It speaks to exactly the issues you bring up. My boss, by the way, is a veteran.
Dear William:
Last Friday’s class went into meltdown. This is how it played out: when I showed the class Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe “Oh Dearism” and asked if students had even known about the Rwandan civil war, where four and a half million people had died, one student, Sammie, responded that she really didn’t care because we all die anyway, that people should forget about all that stuff and go to church because Armageddon is on its way. I ignored this remark; I certainly did not intend to pursue the issue. Then I turned to the day’s reading, Laura Miller’s article “America the Ignorant,” which seeks to explain why US citizens were so ill-equipped to understand the 9/11 attacks. This was a reading from a collection of works on how our educational system is failing. We talked about how US citizens don’t understand the Muslim world much at all. Then a girl, Ali, mentioned the recent Rolling Stone article about war crimes. I commented on the strange fact that people are openly acknowledging killing for fun in the Mideast. One student, a veteran, had something to say about his experience in Iraq but couldn’t finish his sentence because he broke down. The girl who had made the remark on religion, Sammie, then let the class know that she came from a Christian military family and that her uncles had told her that they had killed some Iraqis for fun and thrown them in a river. When a student, Sean, responded rather dryly that accepting this action might contradict her Christianity, all hell broke loose. As I was passing back papers at the end of class, Sammy got out of her chair and pointed her finger into Sean’s face, screaming at him for attacking her religion and telling him he needs Jesus. And I mean uncontrolled screaming, so loud that people told me they could hear her all the way down the hall. As I was trying to defuse the issue, one student, Marsha, was telling people that Sean had once again been out of line by attacking people’s views. She’s been hostile to him from the first day, when he made a critical comment about the healthcare industry. Marsha gets hostile to anything or anyone she disagrees with. She wants to be a psychiatrist.
No doubt I could have handled the situation better, but I’ll tell you, I have never had a class where tensions run so high or students are so hard to control. When some students speak, others quite obviously roll their eyes. During one class, after which I had found that some students cutting and pasting off the Internet, I explained that this is plagiarism and that those who had done so had not received a grade, but, as I assumed that they might not understand this to be plagiarism, I would allow them to rewrite their papers. I had, by the way, spoken on the issue before. One girl who had plagiarized, DeAvanna, called herself out and screamed at me that I could not tell if someone was doing so, that I was lying. She was defended by Marsha, who, being a senior who is retaking the class because she got a C the first time around, should have known better. DeAvanna also screamed at me that I had taught her nothing and that she doesn’t listen to anything I say. I told her that the subjects she was raising were not appropriate to a discussion class, wherein we are supposed to be discussing the essays, and she responded that she could say whatever she wanted. She said I was supposed to be teaching her how to use commas; ironically, that morning I’d emailed the class a site on just this issue and had planned to go over it that day. I ended the class by saying that no, students cannot say whatever they want, particularly if it’s rude and off-subject, to which some students responded by saying “thank you.”
Then there was the class where the students accused me of grading unfairly. The next session’s reading luckily was an essay by Alfie Kohn about how grading can interfere with learning, which we discussed. Most students agreed with the essay. Then I showed them the syllabus and explained that if I stuck rigidly to the syllabus, I would not have allowed people to rewrite their first paper for a better grade because they had not been given a low enough grade, and couldn’t have given them a grade higher than a C on the rewrite. I explained that I would have had to flunk those students who had cut and pasted off the Internet. I explained that I had indeed given one student a higher grade on the midterm grade than I should have because he handed in some good work and explained problems he’d been having getting things in on time, and that this was a mistake on my part, but it really won’t affect his final grade. I suggested that if students would concentrate on their writing rather than their grades, they’d likely make better progress and thus get better grades. Then I passed out a sheet on which they could vote on whether I should have to stick rigidly to the syllabus. The vote was overwhelmingly no, and I thought I’d dealt with the anger issues erupting in the class and settled people down.
(continued below)
I don’t want to give you the impression that this class is a total disaster. Most of our classes have been interesting and productive. Some students, including DeAvanna, are indeed making great progress in their writing, are becoming much better readers, and are enthusiastic about the class—except for when it goes into meltdown (well, I suspect some students find this to be smashingly good theatre). I have offered students who are not required to be in SLA the opportunity to continue discussing the readings outside the classroom, and many have taken me up on it (that was what I was doing when you last saw me in Main Classroom). I spent some time this weekend emailing back and forth with Sean, who wants to stop coming to class but continue to do the readings and write about them in his journals, and finish the essays. As he is 35 years old, and writes better and has read more than most English graduate students, I would like to grant him that wish, if I can. He’s one who gets the brunt of the eye-rolling whenever he opens his mouth to say something intelligent about the readings, and he rightly feels that he is being attacked. I spent about an hour on the phone last night with Marsha, who called me to discuss her views, and hopefully we have clarified some issues.
Usually I have little trouble with classroom management, and need not go to the department for help. I have tried all sorts of things with this class. When several students said they’d like to read about education, and suggested readings and authors they found valuable, as well as the documentary “Waiting for Superman,” I did some research on education and rewrote the reading schedule. When Marsha said she needed more instruction on using MLA format and quoting, I devoted most of a class to the issue, even though I’d sent out a template that makes MLA format simple. Frankly, I’ve spent more time on this one class than I can ever remember having to do before. Also, I suspect that the tensions have more to do with racial issues than what I am doing, although I have tried to defuse this in every way imaginable. Marsha, who is trying to get into medical school and is thus retaking the class for a better grade—as she told me on the first day—keeps defending students who are disruptive and angry, and seems to be insinuating that I am a racist. She acts as if this is her class, signaling approval or disapproval for everything I say. I suspect she is trying to garner support for going to the department and complaining that my grading is unfair if I do not give her the grade she feels she deserves, as she did the first time she took the class.
I called in sick this morning because I had gotten absolutely no sleep, had a raging headache, and was too exhausted to feel safe driving—and was frankly very upset. I still am. As sick and tired as I am, I’ve spent the morning writing this to you, as well as writing a letter to the class, which is attached. I want your opinion on whether I should send it to my students.
Yours,
Elizabeth
The real world of teaching. Thanks for the post.
Tom, based on Elizabeth's description of her university classroom behavior I don't feel half bad about my high school students, particularly above freshmen.
On those occasions, as a substitute teacher, when the opportunity arises to engage in discourse about an issue that the students are interested in discussing more broadly, or comparing and relating to analogous issues, I am generally pleased to find that the majority of students are quite interested, show real curiosity, and willing to be open minded and actively engaged in learning about connecting the how's and why's of historical and contemporary issues.
Attention spans can certainly flag if the presentation of useful answers to questions and connections to their inquiries are unsatisfactory, but that just keeps one fast of their feet with providing interesting answers and understandable analogies --- in order to keep the learning opportunities rolling.
But the benefits of such open inquiry accrue both to the students and this supposed teacher --- who is often forced to look with 'new eyes' on issues that this old dog had mistakenly or jadedly thought were already fully explored.
Recently, I had a student ask some things about the Vietnam war that later caused me to greatly review and extend my own thinking on the true impact of this seminal era in history, which I had deeply studied but missed the greatest effect of.
Best,
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy over violent empire -- People's Party 2012
Global People's Anti-Empire Movement 2011/NOW
What greatest effect?
Crossing the Rubicon ---- Becoming Empire
Best,
Alan
Sounds like a great class. I had one (1) exactly one teacher in high school some 40 years ago in whose classes such things took place -- not regularly, but fairly frequently.
In response to parental complaint, the administration tried to sack him year after year, but he had financial resources outside work and so could threaten the district with a lengthy and expensive legal battle, so year after year they demurred. They eventually gave him full classes of students with substantial learning disabilities. He taught them all to pass their tests to get into regular classes except for a handful who told me that they deliberately failed their tests because the last thing they wanted was to be subjected to a "normal" classroom.
Of course your students are not all acting as maturely as one might like, but they think these things on the best of days, don't they? The polite, hands-folded classes that we are almost all almost completely accustomed to and bored by make no indication that the students are capable of taking on a mature discussion (as you obviously know). The difficulty (genuine, yes, of course) is not caused by their speaking out; it is only on more obvious display. How could the situation be otherwise when the system and its participants at all levels move in such extreme denial?
The problems this may cause you may be very real, depending in part on your administration. But what you describe is only a part of the overhead of really opening a real topic.
In my opinion, no. I would not write a letter that would be sent to all students in the class. I'd tailor individual letters to individual students--if someone (like Sammie) is being obnoxious, she should be told so. The rules of classroom discourse must be followed--respect for other viewpoints, no matter how distant they are from that held by the rest. No eye-rolling. Students need to model the behavior they would like to receive. Most of the class, no doubt, does not offend--only a few. They can be told to follow the rules. It might be the best thing you do as teacher this year.
I don't think you completely understand.
Say I mention to Sammie that she's been obnoxious. She'd be back to my boss, complaining that I abused her and hurt her feelings.
This is the same thing I witnessed doing field work in an urban school: the schools have given up all discipline, and have championed student rights. Sounds great, so progressive, right? No. The students have all the rights, and they greatly outnumber the teacher. THEY know what they need, and what the teacher is doing wrong. The administration will side with them rather than the teacher. After all, we have these really progressive rules for the students, and besides, getting students is a competitive thing.
Yeah, but it isn't fair to the rest of the class to let Sammie continue what she is doing. You won't call her obnoxious. You will point out that her comments are disruptive and hurtful to other students. That is the way I would describe the situation to administration. If they see it in terms of one student offending other students, they will stand by you. After all, if Sammie screws up the class for others, they will be less likely to attend class at your school--they might go somewhere else.
drosera
I don't think you've understood what Elizabeth is saying. I have been in University teaching for more than 35 years and now am a retired professor. I did not meet Elizabeth's type of disciplinary problems, partly because I was a Full Professor with Tenure and a very solid research record by the time discipline started to disintegrate. That happened especially in small, not well funded, colleges such as, probably ( I am guesing here), where Elizabeth is teaching; and partly because I made it a point to tell a student who was wilfully ignorant and unreasoning in no uncertain terms that this was so. I was able to by my rank and experience, as well as knowing what I was teaching, students needed in the professional world.
Elizabeth is teaching a liberal arts course. When you write to Elizabeth such practically valueless, paternalistic advice:
" That is the way I would describe the situation to administration. If they see it in terms of one student offending other students, they will stand by you."
I could not help but get upset that here is a person who has never dealt with the type of non-scholarly, non-research, MBA type of know- nothing, bin counting administrators that colleges and universities have been full of over the last 20 years (I know and have dealt with them). Understanding administrators? Ha!
Also, this sentence: " After all, if Sammie screws up the class for others, they will be less likely to attend class at your school--they might go somewhere else" is a classic example of market based thinking that has invaded universities and colleges, namely that they must "compete" for students by molly coddling and baby-sitting them. I thought that was what Chris Hedges was complaining about.
Elizabeth. Sammie is the type of student who wants to test how far she can push you and frighten you into giving her a good grade. From your race observation it seems that you and Sammie are of different races. It is doubtful that she is in your class to learn about your subject, namely critical analysis of English essays. Since she wants to go to medical school, this may be a required humanities class for her that she needs a high grade to enter med school. You will have to do serious bargaining with her. But never do it alone and do not provoke the race card. You will never see the end of it. You have to bargain with her on what your expectations are for a high grade from her self interest, not from any intellectual merit in your course, which, it seems to me, she probably is not interested in because of a utilitarian mindset.
..
OMG.
This was at a UNIVERSITY? A senior at a university needs to be taught how to reference? A whole class needs to be devoted on how to reference?
You are a saint.
I've known students who have taken stop watches to class to determine how much time teachers have to devote to disciplinary issues as opposed to actual instruction. Some have told me that 50-75% of their teachers' time was devoted to discipline and classroom management of unruly and disrespectful students.
Now who might be empowering these students to feel they can harass their teachers with impunity? The entire culture, and especially the political culture, has taught these students they can engage in the same kind of teacher bashing that occurs every day in the media and in our political discourse.
Elizabeth,
I have to say that you sound like a fantastic educator! Your students are lucky to have a teacher so dedicated and caring.
Take care..
As a part-time college instructor, this all sounds too familiar, including the calling in sick part. What got left out of this was the fact that most instructors dealing with these drones are adjuncts without benefits who need to work second jobs to make ends meet. When the students see their professor working that second job, they lose what begrudging respect they may have had for the instructor and lose even more respect for the whole notion of being "educated" (after all, if you got a PhD and have to work two jobs to make it, why get an education--it doesn't lead to "success").
Thanks for your candor. Two useful tools: WORD FOR WORD: "YOU ARE VERY ANGRY, ARN'T YOU?" This creates a LINK of EQUALITY and calls their EGO to participate in AGREEMENT. That creates EQUITY, between you, without which, no true communication, but talking AT, or DOWN TO, or UP TO. "You are really upset, ARN'T YOU?" Use their response to generate a DIALOGUE to unearth aspects of their WOUND. You are going to ask them for their OPINION, which is what they are trying to toss out anyway. You don't say: YOU are ANGRY, or DON'T BE angry, or imply shame. They suffer from TOXIC SHAME, and their EGO has been triggered.
Once they express their ANGRY, you can appeal to basic EQUAL TIME, and if they lock up, say so: "YOU don't want to give equal time, do you?" This sounds simple. Even childish, but it is effective.
You might organize the class at this point into FOR and AGAINST and give three minutes to each person to express, or two minutes. AVOID finding fault with the fault finder. Engage them directly. And do not claim to be their victim, which feeds their ego, i.e. YOU OFFEND ME, or I am weak by your display -- forget that. These are emotional-mental nut cases, deeply wounded, and begging for attention. All bully behavior is a cry for acceptance. Disarm the bully by this basic method.
If you gain a discussion with the group, you can draw a map of HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS on the blackboard. Three zones. TOP, MIDDLE, LOW. Most human behavior is in the LOW ZONE, and there is NO LIGHT. PRIDE is the cap.
It takes effort to move beyond PRIDE, into the MIDDLE, where there is light mixed with darkness.
This MAP of CONSCIOUSNESS is the result of several different sources that are in agreement, including Hawaiian Kahuna Shaman Wisdom, who tell you, as your class does not GET, that you DO not GET to the TOP from the MIDDLE, but via the LOW SELF, i.e. face your own shit, and clean it up, not by projecting it onto others, but by accepting your wound, and in that ACCEPTANCE, look where that puts you on the map! Your frequency jumps right up. FORGIVENESS is the brilliant key that our Lord instructed us so wonderfully to honor.
The CABALLAH which is beloved of the JEWS, but is older than EGYPT, from whence the JEWS obtained same, traced back to ATLANTIS, is in the high 90% agreement with Dr. DAVID HAWKINS' global, quarter-century investigation into these matters. GURDJIEFF, my hero, got this correct too, and he was a SUFI, as indeed, I AM. Yet I am also saved by CHRIST, so both Christians and Muslims have trouble relating to me. HUH? YEP! Mayan Indians also got this correct. So do some EBE ET types who speak on such matters. It is a good map. You can print it and use it in your class for discussion. I find it breaks conflict into communication 98% of the time. Just hand the map to the angry one, and ask: SHOW ME ONE WORD YOU CAN RELATE TO RIGHT NOW. Just one word. EGO is pleased to be asked, and nearly everyone does. I am always amazed at their choice. it often is far from what I expected, but then you can say YOUR WORD, and now a dialogue is opened. (Unfortunately, each time I try to post THE MAP in order, the machine jumbles it, so just study the columns and their corresponding points, it will become clear... each is a dimension, and each "zone" has a frequency, on a LOG SCALE, so the HIGH is very HIGH indeed, and the LOW, is very low, as you saw in your class, with the folks in toxic shame, a very dull vibe. )
MAP OF CONSCIOUSNESS & Frequency
PROCESS - EMOTION - LIFE-VIEW - VIBE-ZONE - GOD VIEW - LOG:
Conscious- * Ineffable * IS * Enlightening * SELF * 700 - 1000
ness, Pure
Illumination * BLISS * PERFECT * PEACE * ALL-BEING * 600
Renovation * Serenity * COMPLETE * JOY * ONE * 540
REVELATION * Reverence * BENIGN * LOVE * Godliness * 500
Abyss -- gap - Gurdjieff’s octave point -- Dark Night of the SOUL - gap
Below, is analog to Max Freedom Long’s KAHUNA Middle Self -- Big Key Point
Abstraction * Understand- * Meaningful * REASON * Wise, Goddess * 400
ing MAMA, Paravati
Transcendance * Forgiveness * Harmonious * Acceptance * Merciful, God * 350
Jesus’ key Allah’s key
INTENTION * Optimism * HOPEFUL * Willingness * INSPIRING * 310
RELEASE * TRUST * Satisfactory * NEUTRALITY * ENABLING * 250
Empowerment * Affirmation * FEASIBLE * COURAGE * Permitting * 200
gap -- The SHADOW -- The Parent -- The Censor -- Robo Cop -- gateway -
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff’s first octave point -- (SUFI pov) --
Below, is analog to Max Freedom Long’s KAHUNA Low Self --Wise Hawai’ian Key
INFLATION * SCORN * DEMANDING * P R I D E * INDIFFERENT * 175
Aggression * HATE * Antagonistic * ANGER * VENGEFUL * 150
Enslavement * CRAVING * Dissapointing * D E S I R E * DENYING * 125
WITHDRAWAL * A N X I E T Y * Frighten-ING * FEAR * Punitive-PAIN * 100
Despondency * REGRET * T R A G I C * G R I E F * DISDAINFUL * 75
ABDICATION * DESPAIR * HOPELESS * APATHY * Condemning * 50
DESTRUCTION * BLAME * EVIL * GUILT * VINDICTIVE * 30
ELIMINATION * Humiliation * MISERABLE * SHAME * DESPISING * 20
Adapted from: POWER VS. FORCE by Doctor DAVID R. HAWKINS, M.D., Ph.D - isbn:1-56170-933-6 The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. “...most important...significant book I have read... DR. WAYNE DYER author: 10 Secrets for Success & Inner Peace. Modified by Prof. Mark Alla’n Dharm-Reese (a 670 vibe)
Elizabeth H wrote:
"Sammie, responded that she really didn’t care because we all die anyway, that people should forget about all that stuff and go to church because Armageddon is on its way."
A perfect example of how religion deliberately retards thought.
Whenever there's a shooting spree, or mass murder of people who fall into religious nuts narrow 'accepted' categories, or even a single killing of somebody they hold dear and then anguish about, just mention that 'god must have really wanted them'....and then see how they go right off their face at you.
You see it's a lovely make-believe world when it happens to somebody else but when it's personal or shows up their mythologies for exactly what they are, religious people get violently argumentative and deadly.
Religious nut cases are so embracing of disaster, death & destruction except when it's too close to home. They need the ever-present promise of 'Armageddon' and a belief that they alone will be chosen to be 'saved' in order to keep the illusions going.
Another thing to always call out religious wacko's over is the countless times in history that 'Armageddon' has been fervently promised to be just about to happen...and then it always fails to materialise.
Of course I don't suggest any of this to be addressed in a schoolroom situation even though seeing religion for what it really is should be everybody's concern.
And dealing with already religiously brainwashed kids is hard enough already.
The best thing anyone can be taught or to realise themselves are the joys of thinking and learning.
"Religious nut cases are so embracing of disaster, death & destruction..."
Their revered symbol is an instrument of torture and death.
Jack
"Trust those who are seeking the Truth. Doubt those who find it." André Gide
to Elizabeth H.
If the person you refer to as "Sammie" in your posting is telling the truth, then she has admitted that her uncles are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Correct. Pass GO! Collect $200. I quit trying to reform EDUCATION from inside. I was hired as a Professor in four nations, i.e. Brazil, China, America, & India. I was a Curriculum Designer, appointed to create the nation's first Black Studies Dept, (U.W., Sea, Wa., '68) and did curriculum design for U.C.L.A. "Film School" ('68-72) and for OSHO Multiversity (helped build the place from scratch) for a Pre School. Curriculum Designers are POINT ZERO ONE % of USA workers. I also built a pre-school, taught High School, and now invented an alternative school that will bring intelligence to children, and pay them to learn. I took this invention to the FEDS, to States, everywhere, and NOBODY WILL PLAY. Zero. Nada. Zilch. I might as well be a homeless foreign tongued devil. Yet JESUITS hired me to be "The Youngest Dean in Our History, and BEST QUALIFIED, to replace FIVE DEANS, at their Loyola University, L.A., Ca., 1973. With this background I cannot even get a dialogue with anyone in Education. At any level. In any city or State or with the FEDS. I eventually designed my new school within a school, but cannot find anyone to fund the startup. People just don't want educated people in America. It is that simple.
The average young person (I will be 70 on my next birthday) is so far short of a full-deck, as we used to say, they are not even able to play the game. Yet they all think they are so COOL or HOT or NEAT. This crime against humanity is a con-job.
we need to go back to making sure the only educated people are the children of the rich so they can propagate the mindset that keeps and maintains the two class system, ie rich and poor,
get rid of the troublesome middle class
That's exactly what is happening. The sad thing is that the middle-class doesn't even know it's at war.
The middle class is all that keeps the poor class from slitting the throats of the the wealthy class. I guess the latter skipped history class
I agree with the sentiment but am compelled to point out one major flaw in this line of thinking. The middle class,was never entirely oblivious to the war being waged against them. They were just compliant to it. Most in the middle class thought themselves impervious to the inevitable backlash that we are now seeing, that they, being brighter and more solvent than the majority of americans, would not suffer when this class war peaked. They chose to forget the lower classes then and offered only a standing tribute or write-off donation to their chosen charity to help ease their conscious. All was well and good, right?
Fast forward forty (or four hundred) years and now the middle class has lost much ground. Many of those who lived quite comfortably now find themselves eschewed into its lower ranks or even further below. Suddenly, there is a war on the middle-class We must save the middle-class. The middle class is what makes america strong.
Wrong. This is a war against everyone. The middle-class is a non-issue, a non-entity. The middle-class rode the wave of economic bubbles on the backs of the poor they helped our oligarchs create. The middle-class are not victims. They are conspirators, but since the hands that fed them have now returned to the pockets of their masters the middle-class cries foul.
Screw the middle-class. Scream for equality and freedom for all people; a just society. This war against education isn't a war against the middle-class. It's about the subjugation of all people to the United States of the Almighty Dollar.
This is an important point. I'm sick of hearing about the suffering of the middle-class. Not that it isn't real, it just serves to obscure the brutal treatment of say, Palestinians, Iraqi's prisoners, the homeless, the medically uninsured, etc.
When I said to acquaintances that the "middle-class" union workers protesting in Wisconsin (which I still support) were silent in the face of decades of oppression of the poor, incarcerated and drug war victims, actually profiting from the oppression, they looked at me like I was crazy. But it's true.
Now the Koch's are directing their attacks on them, they cry foul and want everyone to rush to their defense. It's a classic case of Niemoller's dilemma; First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists...
Well, you need to stand up for everyone's basic human dignity.
Jiminy,
Some but not all middle-class union workers were silent. Some but not all.
Cheers,
Monkey
we need to go back to making sure the only educated people are the children of the rich so they can propagate the mindset that keeps and maintains the two class system, ie rich and poor,
get rid of the troublesome middle class
Not to worry. It's happening.
So human beings are developing society into the ultimate hive organism.
Given enough time, in evolution terms, this is possible.
But not with our current spread of genome.
For this program to work, it actually has to increase the reproduction of the
human types that are docile, but just intelligent enough to obey orders,
and make simple decisions in particular occupations.
The program must also decrease the reproduction of people who both more self-reliant, globally intelligent and socially successful.
But it is not clear that a dumbing down of education actually fulfils the requirements of this hive eugenics possibility.
The current US experiment, by choice or otherwise, aims to stunt growing human beings by impoverishing and poisoning the environments of pregnancy and early childhood. This is done successfully by poor nutrition, air and chemical pollution, and socio-economic deprivation.
Surprise, many do grow up to become drug addicts, criminal or just plain unemployed.
But are they really docile, and where are the jobs? Even those with reasonable upbringing and education are finding it tough. The hungry will turn to crime.
How far to extrapolate current trends before the majority of US population will end in the prison system, or will wreck the remains of the nation in violence? The barbarians are being bred inside the nation.
"But are they really docile, and where are the jobs? Even those with reasonable upbringing and education are finding it tough. The hungry will turn to crime.
How far to extrapolate current trends before the majority of US population will end in the prison system, or will wreck the remains of the nation in violence? The barbarians are being bred inside the nation "
It's an assumption that people will turn to crime.
They may turn to community activism, to setting up charities, to starting farms, to creating alternate economies outside the system.
there are many things people can and will do.
I am speechless. Chris has written this like a beautiful but sad song....and ever so true. The truth of it hurts my heart.
It is obvious the lack of any inner retrospective in the everyday politics of the no nothings in this society. Those that I encounter in my daily life are like Chris said, and they take pride in knowing nothing and NOT wanting to know anything. As my friend Forest says..."Stupid is as stupid does."
Where there is no “study”, there is no knowing, and with no knowing, there is no future.
Thank you Chris.
“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.” – Karl Rove
Or they get real knowledge and vote for a real left party, instead of voting for democrats or republicans.
Luscious quote - I would love to have the documentary source of this particular gem.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_bush_on_voting_republican.htm
Not Bush, but Rove -- source given as
"Bush's Trillions: How to Buy the Republican Majority of Tomorrow," published in the February 19, 2001 issue of The New Yorker.
with the context. I found it by entering the quote into search engine (Bing, but I expect others would yield the same result)
Bush's Trillions: How to Buy the Republican Majority of Tomorrow.
The New Yorker, 19 February 2001
Given the paucity of real, productive work, who needs an education? We've substituted training to function as serfs in the "system" for education.