A Treatise on Education, or How I think We Should Fix it.

Having been a teacher either in secondary or post-secondary education for eleven years, I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to the American educational system. I started out as a mere graduate teaching assistant (GTA) while I was working on my Master’s degree, way back in 1992 - now that dates me! All told, I was a GTA for the year it took me to get my Master’s and then again later for three years during my Ph.D. studies (but that was as an English GTA).

Anyhoo, I was assigned two classes of 30 students for a public speaking "lab" that went along with a mass lecture course that was required for all undergraduates at the university where I was going to school. As GTAs, we sometimes got the opportunity to teach the mass lecture course ourselves individually. It takes balls to get up in front of 300 people and act like you know what the hell you’re talking about when you’re only 22. Additionally, we got to help create the exams, not to mention deal with our own little class of 30 kids three times a week, all very good experience for a beginning teacher. The biggest problem with this aspect of teaching, being a GTA, is the pay. Although we got a huge break on our tuition and a small stipend, after teaching and going to class all day, the possibility of having a "real" job are slim to none. So as a GTA, I lived on quite a few meals of spaghetti noodles with butter because that’s all I could afford. So my complaint with this aspect of a teaching career is PAY US MORE MONEY!!! Geez, we have to eat even if we are only GTAs!!!

Then I moved up the food chain and became, drum roll please, AN ADJUNCT PROFESSOR!!! I taught both public speaking and several variations of English courses for both universities and community colleges in Florida and later in Georgia. Ok, for real being an adjunct ain’t all that it’s cracked up to be. In essence, an adjunct professor is a sort of scab, yeah, as in the strike version. In other words, universities and community colleges are more and more likely to hire an adjunct professor over a full-time professor simply because they can pay adjuncts far less and they are not required to provide adjuncts benefits. Thus, it creates a sort of crazy dynamic. As someone who doesn’t have a doctorate yet, it is pretty difficult these days to get a full-time position anywhere unless you teach high school, so you desperately *need* the adjunct positions in order to get the experience; however, you are at the same time filling the very positions that other people (or maybe even you) want full-time!!! Additionally, as I mentioned, the pay sux and you don’t get any benefits. I think while I was in Florida they set up a mandatory retirement system for adjuncts, but it was nothing near a real benefit. So for 5 years I was an adjunct and to make ends meet, some semesters I taught seven courses of 25-30 students. I was able to do that by teaching at several different schools at one time. If you’ve ever taught school, you’ll know that grading roughly 210 research papers in one semester REALLY SUX!!! So can you say over worked and under paid????? It’s not fair to the teacher OR the students...It’s a virtual rape of both sets of workers. Why should I have had to teach 7 classes just to live? And not luxurious living either!! I made right around 20k a year during this time. Then those people with the Ph.D.s weren’t even able to get jobs because all the adjuncts had them, or they worked as adjuncts, too. Beggars can’t be choosers and in the post-secondary field, most people are beggars.

Finally, I decided to hell with being an adjunct with no benefits or retirement and got a job teaching high school English. I made way better money, had benefits, and retirement. The catch was that because I had spent so much time in the post-secondary field, I was basically starting over in secondary education. So in order to get a full retirement, I wouldn’t be able to retire until I was super old. Not good in education, you have to have *energy* to deal with a classroom of 25-30 kids. That is pretty much the standard. Then there’s the whole problem with secondary education itself.....

What, you ask, do I mean by that? Let’s just say that No Child Left Behind is a ridiculously unattainable goal for any educational system. Not only does it set up children for failure in one form or another, it also sets up the teachers for the same. Everyone is different. There are smart people, and there are people who aren’t. Although science hasn't given us a definitive answer yet, it is most likely a function of both biology and environment more or less. No Child Left Behind, and other like goals, ignores this basic fact. When we try to smash every sort of child no matter their intelligence level or emotional/behavioral maturity level into the same classroom, it is just a recipe for failure. Those students who aren’t as quick as the quickest will either get left behind and act out if the class is paced to reach the higher functioning students, or vice versa, with the higher functioning students becoming bored and usually discipline problems at the same time. Then the teacher is also put into a bind. How does she cater to such a broad range of students, with much less ability to wield authority than teachers of yesteryear had?? How does she maintain control of her classroom while "remediating" Billy’s lessons, and "enhancing" Susie’s lessons to meet their individual learning needs? What about Jimmy who has ADHD and must be watched closely to be sure he doesn’t "drift off" in class? Or Sammy who tends to disrupt class when he’s bored or not actively engaged in a hands-on project? What does one, single teacher do when her classroom is so diversified that she is practically writing 30 IEPs (in eduspeak that means "individual education plans" and are used to assist students in special education where the classes are half the size) for one class?

Additionally, the kids nowadays know that there are really no consequences to bad behavior in class, other than being expelled, but that is such a long process that it rarely happens and then those kids who are finally expelled really never wanted to be in school anyway. They know that they can pretty much act any way they want to, and they will essentially get away with it because they don’t care if they are sent home for three days; it’s a mini-vacation in their eyes. Or even if they get in-school suspension, they don’t care about that either because they can usually get their parents to get them out of it.

So when the kids aren’t performing well on the avalanche of standardized tests given each semester, or the discipline in a classroom goes haywire, everyone looks to the teacher. Why in the world aren’t these kids passing? Acting right? What are you *doing* in there? Teachers are told to set the bar high and then are asked to lower it so the kids can pass. Teachers are told to be strict, and then the kids get off scott free when they don’t behave. The job is a friggin’ paradox most days. The opposite of what it should be, and what people expect it to be. They are asking teachers to take kids who aren’t prepared or who are over-prepared, who don’t care, who have no consequences, all sitting in the same classroom, and to perform some kind of miracle to get them to ALL pass!

That’s all well and good, but does EVERYBODY achieve success in the job market, every time???? Do bosses slow down the pace of the workplace for those who can’t keep up? Or do they cater to those who are bored? Do they keep workers who cause havoc and conflict or who refuse to do what is asked of them? Do they give workers a second, third, fourth chance to finish something and then give the worker praise for a half-assed product? Do workers get raises when they SUCK? Why should kids pass when they suck? People bitch about how teachers get tenure and it’s practically impossible to fire them once they have it. I agree; tenure is a double-edged sword. But why should kids have tenure in the classroom? In other words why should they be allowed to wreck havoc in a classroom that they don’t appreciate and don’t work hard to be successful in? What other solutions are there?

My suggestion is tracking! A dirty word in education these days...oh it’s bad for the self-esteem, everybody should be able to go to college! News flash people, not every wants to go to or is cut out for college. Pretty much a bachelor’s degree these days is about worth the paper you wipe your butt with because courses have been so watered down. Is that what we want? Degrees that are so adulterated that they aren’t worth anything? Why not track kids into career fields that they are happier in and more suited to? Let them decide what they want to do and give them the resources necessary to get there, but if they don’t friggin’ hack it, re-track their butts! If a kid refuses to do *anything*, PUT THEM TO WORK! That’s right, I said it. I don’t care if they’re five or fifteen. Eventually they will discover that school is way better than work, and they’ll seek education out for themselves. Some may enjoy working more and guess what, hip-hip-hooray for them! At least they won’t be taking up space and annoying the hell outta some poor teacher somewhere who’s trying to do her job.

In my eyes, it’s a great solution because it would reduce class sizes, students in one class would be roughly of the same caliber, and they would all be willing and able participants in the process. What a friggin miracle that would be! Then we need to address the adjuncting abuses by requiring post-secondary employers to pay livable wages with benefits to ALL of their employees. It’s only fair when they do the SAME work!