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.
No comments:
Post a Comment