The following comes from a longtime high school science teacher in Temecula, Calif. He teaches at a large high school of roughly 3,200 students in a middle class neighborhood, and has been an educator for nearly three decades.
Here’s his two cents’ worth, supplied to The College Fix, and it’s probably not something parents are used to hearing, but that’s too bad – because they need to pay heed:
“There are a lot of things about teaching that can be pretty hard – the extra hours we must put in to be successful, the low pay for those hours we put in and for the education we need to be good teachers, myopic parents who think their kid is right even when he is wrong, district leaders who have seem to have no clue what it is like to be in a classroom. All these and more can be exhaustingly hard on us.”
“But I think what is really getting to me in the last few years is dealing with the prevailing and worsening world view that seems to permeate America lately. The one that says everyone is right, no one is wrong (unless you happen to think others might be wrong); we may not separate people in any way, all must be included; we may not speak our mind because it might offend someone; I am entitled to [fill in the blank], I need not work for it.”
“All those attitudes are filling my classes with kids who don’t try, who have an awful work ethic if any at all, who expect teachers and parents to do everything for them, who have no compunction whatsoever for cheating anytime in any circumstance.”
“It forces counselors to put any kid in any class they or their parents want without the filter of prerequisites so that everyone feels ‘included.’ What that does is either guarantee failure for the slower kid who was never meant to be there, or forces the teacher to water down the class so much that virtually no one is served. But at least they pass!”
“For those of us who care, we now have to invest even more of our time in class not just teaching, not just reaching out to the scattered kids who need our personal attention. Now many of us who still care and have not caved-in spend a lot of our time trying to teach an entire philosophy that hard work pays off, that cheating is bad, that there is something called integrity and citizenship and respect, that some will have opinions you may disagree with but that you will survive, that not everything in life is handed to you on a silver platter, that you don’t deserve everything you want, etc.”
“It is wearying.”
“Have we always had at least some problems like those? Yes, of course. Humans are humans. We have to fight selfishness and self-centeredness all the time. But over the last ten years or so the prevailing philosophy in America which says ‘Give me what I want when I want it and don’t tell me I’m wrong for wanting it’ is filling the air of our schools like stink from an open sewage pipe. It’s a stink I’ll never get used to and is pushing me out the door sooner than I want to go.”
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IMAGE: Cybrarian77/Flickr (Person shown is not teacher who supplied essay).
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