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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