I Quit,
I Think
In the first
year of the last decade of the twentieth century during my thirtieth year as a
school teacher in Community School District 3, Manhattan, after teaching in all
five secondary schools in the district, crossing swords with one professional
administration after another as they strove to rid themselves of me, after having
my license suspended twice for insubordination and terminated covertly once
while I was on medical leave of absence, after the City University of New York
borrowed me for a five-year stint as a lecturer in the Education Department
(and the faculty rating handbook published by the Student Council gave me the
highest ratings in the department my last three years), after planning and
bringing about the most successful permanent school fund-raiser in New York
City history, after placing a single eighth-grade class into 30,000 hours of
volunteer community service, after organizing and financing a student-run food
cooperative, after securing over a thousand apprenticeships, directing the
collection of tens of thousands of books for the construction of private student
libraries, after producing four talking job dictionaries for the blind, writing
two original student musicals, and launching an armada of other initiatives to
reintegrate students within a larger human reality, I quit.
I was New York
State Teacher of the Year when it happened. An accumulation of disgust and
frustration which grew too heavy to be borne finally did me in. To test my
resolve I sent a short essay to The Wall
Street Journal titled "I Quit, I Think." In it I explained my
reasons for deciding to wrap it up, even though I had no savings and not the
slightest idea what else I might do in my mid-fifties to pay the rent. In its
entirety it read like this:
Government schooling is the most radical
adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of
childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents. The whole
blueprint of school procedure is Egyptian, not Greek or Roman. It grows from
the theological idea that human value is a scarce thing, represented
symbolically by the narrow peak of a pyramid.
That idea passed into American history through the Puritans. It
found its "scientific" presentation in the bell curve, along which
talent supposedly apportions itself by some Iron Law of Biology. It’s a
religious notion, School is its church. I offer rituals to keep heresy at
bay. I provide documentation to justify the heavenly pyramid.
Socrates foresaw if teaching became a formal profession,
something like this would happen. Professional interest is served by making
what is easy to do seem hard; by subordinating the laity to the priesthood.
School is too vital a jobs-project, contract giver and protector of the
social order to allow itself to be "re-formed." It has political
allies to guard its marches, that’s why reforms come and go without changing
much. Even reformers can’t imagine school much different.
David learns to read at age four; Rachel, at age nine: In normal
development, when both are 13, you can’t tell which one learned first—the
five-year spread means nothing at all. But in school I label Rachel
"learning disabled" and slow David down a bit, too. For a paycheck,
I adjust David to depend on me to tell him when to go and stop. He won’t
outgrow that dependency. I identify Rachel as discount merchandise, "special
education" fodder. She’ll be locked in her place forever.
In 30 years of teaching kids rich and poor I almost never met a
learning disabled child; hardly ever met a gifted and talented one either.
Like all school categories, these are sacred myths, created by human
imagination. They derive from questionable values we never examine because
they preserve the temple of schooling.
That’s the secret behind short-answer tests, bells, uniform time
blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion
punishing our nation. There isn’t a right way to become educated; there are
as many ways as fingerprints. We don’t need state-certified teachers to make
education happen—that probably guarantees it won’t.
How much more evidence is necessary? Good schools don’t need
more money or a longer year; they need real free-market choices, variety that
speaks to every need and runs risks. We don’t need a national curriculum or
national testing either. Both initiatives arise from ignorance of how people
learn or deliberate indifference to it. I can’t teach this way any longer. If
you hear of a job where I don’t have to hurt kids to make a living, let me
know. Come fall I’ll be looking for work.
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