Beginning during the Reagan years, public education began a slide down hill. This was not due to the public school system itself or teacher deficiencies but to politicians, local, state, and national, who needed an issue that affected everyone and, as all children are supposed to attend school by law and all parents with children send them to school like they had to go, this was a common experience that could be exploited.

They ignored the actual experiences of the parents, promoting the idea that at some time after they had left school it all went to hell and it all needed to be returned to the warm fuzzy experience the parents had.

Without a real issue, politicians began to go after education claiming there were problems only they could fix, which was only possible because they had claimed there was a problem and could very conveniently claim they cured the nonexistent upon election without doing more than simply stop talking about it.

To prove the solutions offered were effective, the non educators decided they needed to constantly test kids and the better the test result, the better the solution was that really did not exist. Tests were tailored to guarantee there was a measure of progress even if there wasn’t any real achievement beyond what the levels had been except the measuring tools had changed. It was changing the temperature reading from celsius to fahrenheit claiming the larger number proves it got hotter.

All education became geared to the test, a mortal sin in the minds of teachers, and this resulted in anything that could not be answered by darkening the bubbles on standardized test papers with a number two pencil was dropped from the curriculum.

The often asked question, “Why don’t they teach (whatever) in school any more?”, should actually be, “Why don’t they let teachers teach that anymore?”. There is an actual case of a twelfth grade English Literature teacher being told by his evaluator that it was sufficient for the students to know the definition of Shakespeare related terms as those would be on the test for sure, but it was not necessary to actually see a Shakespeare play to do well on the test, so showing one was not allowed.

A testing industry sprang up, and as school boards did not know, could not know, how to meet the changing requirements of a policy built on sand, in their effort to appear informed, school boards and district administrators spent millions of education dollars on the cottage industry of experts and consultants who were former school administrators who had seen the cash cow on the horizon and not on educating the students.

Part of the solution to all the schools’ ills was the building of self-esteem. This called for a whole other industry based on the proper methodologies and money to be made by the experts in the field that was being invented as things went along and modified as needed to look good without producing any true, unmanufactured results which, if carefully examined is at the very soul of the self-esteem movement.

Those not directly involved with education know it as the movement that ensured every participant got a trophy. You may not have won the contest, but, just look at you. Who’s the good boy?

Children could not fail. They could, but teachers had to come up with every possible way to make sure that, in spite of reality, every child was a winner, no matter what. 

Teachers could not give the actual failing grade the student earned. Teachers were to find alternate assignments they would have to correct along with the other assignments if a student found one too challenging. Teachers were to retest kids who failed the test or did not do the assignment regardless whether it was because of difficulty of task or lethargy of the student until something was found that the student would comfortably agree to do and for which they were required to be given a passing grade.

A student could control the teacher and what the other students could learn by lodging a complaint with the front office that the teacher, something in the curriculum, an assignment, individual or group, offended or threatened them somehow and they would feel better if it were removed. It did not take kids long to realize they were in control but, not knowing how to use their power for their benefit, used it for convenience.

And no one was allowed to correct them or they might feel their stature had been cruelly reduced.

At one point teachers requested that districts install some sort of device to block cell phone signals or at least limit the types of calls, if possible. Parent calling during class to remind a student to get certain groceries on the way home could not be prevented since students would not give up their phones and, since administration took the easy road and offered no support for them, the teachers’ only option would be to try to take away a student’s cell phone and face a possible physical confrontation in class and an angry parent after school, if there wasn’t an unannounced parental appearance at the classroom door during class time demanding why the teacher took the phone away from her child.

Students had wrongly been led to believe that anything uncomfortable or that they did not immediately like could be shut down, and the mindset became that if it really was important to know, they would already know it, and they saw teachers who kept bringing up new things as implying they did not know what they should and were, therefore, stupid in the eyes of the teachers which made them the enemy and from whom the students had to defend their honor with their peers as allies.

The whole idea of school, going where people can tell you the things you need to known to have a good shot at life whether academics, sports, the arts, or a combination of any or all seems to have become a place where you go to defend the depth of your present knowledge which will only be supplemented by what the student and their friends tell each while ignoring all that nonsense the world would like them to learn for its good and theirs. 

The fact checking they do in great numbers is to see if their friends agree or disagree with something and, spending the greater part of their days in schools, fact checking the teachers with questionably reliable sources especially when the teacher does not automatically accept as truth what the student says which in the student’s eyes is an assault became common and class time consuming.

Teachers asked for help in dealing with this increasing argumentation instead of learning but were advised not to make the students feel uncomfortable. 

Also part of the self esteem process was leading students to believe that if something is brought up about which they do not know, it was that person’s way of making you feel bad or their way of saying you are deficient somehow.

I received a written reprimand with the admonition for further action if the offense  was repeated. I had always tried to lighten the most boring information required by the curriculum with humor and joke a lot anyway. I might crack a snarky remark about Shakespeare that most students get right away, some get it later, while there were always those who might never get it. Most people can repeat a joke after hearing it once. Same goes with difficult subject matter if presented in a joke.

This reprimand resulted from a student going to the assistant principal to complain that I had said something  in class that had to be a joke because everyone else laughed but she didn’t, and because of that she was afraid to return to class because everyone now thinks she is stupid. Rather than help the kid understand the situation and that not everyone gets every joke, it was decided that I could not joke in class or face further action because obviously students who do not get the joke might feel diminished in stature.

That is class control.

I fought the reprimand and had it expunged from my record.

That is one reason teachers have Unions. Professionals in the classclassroom should not be challenged because only God knows what will trigger a kid and if the triggering is actually real.

This need not to appear stupid, although no one other than the persons themselves are the ones deciding that, involves proving you are right and the other wrong when there is no need to be either and this often involves unnecessary discussion instead of simple conversation.

Worse, because the default mode has devolved into taking offense, a new topic mentioned or a joke told, if unknown or not understood, means whatever was said had to have been intended as an attack, an insult, and there needs to be a defense.

A casual “I’ll drink to that” when joking with friends should not be the catalyst for a sermon on the disrespect for those dealing with sobriety issues and how that one joke reveals that person’s large, deep, inner core that must be repulsed.

 Asking why the chicken crossed the road results in a demand for defense for choosing that type of fowl and with the intention to see if it was a decision based on insensitivity or a form of personal attack on the audience. 

This all-knowledge-worth-knowing-is-already-known attitude has a second component. If something is learned from a friend that could have been learned from someone not a friend,  any adult or teacher for example, something they should already know and which others expect them to already know, the default assumption is that since they just learned it, no one else knows it and and it becomes their duty to run around giving spontaneous Ted Talks to an already informed audience That is glad they have finally caught up, getting mad because th listeners aren’t taking seriously this earth shaking information that only they are unaware that everyone around them already knows.

The lectures are filed with certitude even in those cases where people’s experiences are corrected by someone who heard about it from a friend whether or not a) they really understood what they learned b) they fully grasped the whole concept and know of it what was true, false, fact, speculation, or simply opinion or c) they are telling something to someone who tried to tell that before while they resisted only to be now the belated prophets.

History is not what it was but must be what is preferred it was and the characters in their histories must be pure and flawless because even one difference of opinion out of thousand is enough to erase a life’s work.

We lose history this way. We get so wrapped up in our need to have history justify ourselves and be comfortable and mythic, we attempt to mold it into your desired shape instead of adjusting to the shape it is as we push away those who were the history because the reality they lived was not as comfortable and trigger free as we would like.

A false and comfortable history is preferred to reality, and God help anyone who tries to reveal real history because it makes us feel sad. And, if one done does not know the history, then there is no history to know

Coddling is easier that way

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