For the last several months, I have been substitute teaching, a job which is looked upon with disdain by students, teachers, administrators, but which is oddly appealing. The biggest problem I have encountered is not simply student apathy or administrative patronization, but a combination of factors that makes me leave school every day that I am called in to work angry or frustrated with some aspect of our educational system.
Education initiatives are almost farcical these days. Children’s brains function differently, we are told by neurologists -- a combination of gameboy overuse and television catering to and reinforcing tiny attention spans, so we need to address these changes by revamping our curriculum, and by the way, test scores are so low, that we need to test the children more and more frequently and spend a considerable portion of our classroom time prepping for the test.
So here we are, catering to different learning styles, putting the desks in small groups instead of rows (as if that really accomplishes anything except giving a venue for already chatty kids to ignore the teacher more than they already were), coming up with activities, finding ways to make them write more in every subject, because writing in math class is a really smart way to make use of time when children don’t know their basic number facts, or how to turn a fraction into a percent.
Learning is supposed to be serendipitous, administrators tell us. We as teachers are going to come up with some fabulous activity where the students discover on their own whatever big idea we are preaching at the moment in 45 or 80 minutes. They are going to discover this and other potentially interesting and important things (and then write about them) except either they are so guided that the answer is embarrassingly obvious, or so vague that students don’t learn anything at all except to chat about weekend plans or what they saw on television.
Additionally, because every student is mainstreamed, at least for part of the day, there are a number of individuals in the classroom who distract from any opportunity for real learning of the other students. Some of these children will have one-on-one aides who assist them throughout the entire day. These indiviuals, usually women, often poor, often receive little training and less pay, yet cost the district such large sums that superintendants are loathe to allow any more children to be labelled and tax the district finances even further. So they go to ridiculous lengths to keep some children from receiving appropriate services, regardless of the law.
Not everyone should go to school, as it turns out. The “No Child Left Behind” Act is translating to every child left behind as continuous testing, almost ridiculous drains on teacher and school resources, “new” curriculum that essentially forgets to teach students basic essential skills, and the school administration’s reluctance to hold back kids who have clearly not achieved at the current grade level prevents any real education from taking place.
