Standards

I think the part of the principal's memo that disturbed people the most is his comments on how hard the kids lives were. This type of comment always comes across as condescending. I suppose that almost everyone can be looked at as having a hard life. I imagine that the Astors wonder how I can survive on my small salary. They must think I have a hard life.

Of course many of our kids do have awful lives. While poverty does not cause alcoholism, child abuse, or drug addiction it does increase the percentage of families who suffer from these problems. I have known many cases of kids who came from situations that made me wonder how they survived. As educators we need to help kids deal with these problems. Years ago it became obvious that we couldn't teach kids if they were hungry. This is why free lunch and breakfast programs were started. It is just as true that a child from an abusive home or who lives in a different home every month will have trouble learning. We need to do what ever we need to to help them.

Having said all of this. I will also say that we can not excuse kids for having tough lives. Each kid needs to be dealt with as if they are capable of greatness. We must always demand the most from them. I think that on a really basic level kids need to be dealt with this way. They need to feel that we believe in them. For some of them it may be the most important thing we can give them. The chance to be treated like normal kids.

The person you never want to hire as a teacher is the person who tells you they are becoming teacher to help the poor unfortunate kids. These people almost always fail.

One of the interesting things I have observed is that the kids who did well at my school did well in college even though by "objective standards" they probably did not learn as much as a kid in a better high school. Their success had more to do with being successful than it did with how much they learned. Sometimes they had a hard time when they first got to college, but they were always able to work up to what was expected of them. This is one of the reasons I don't believe in "objective standards". I do believe in pushing kids to work harder than they think they can. This is what builds the capacity necessary to succeed in life. When I teach Chemistry I make sure I ask more of the students than they think they can give.

The first year I taught I was in an 8th grade class. I had the highest level class and the lowest level class. My school was in to dividing kids up this way. I remember thinking that I could not tell the difference between the two extremes. Then one day the high level kids were driving me crazy and so I told them that if they thought they could do a better job then they could teach the class. They did and they did do a better job than I was doing. I realized that they were much smarter than I thought. I was the cause of these kids acting dumb, because I did not demand enough.

It is hard to get the level right. All teachers need someone to come into their class and help them figure out the level. I need someone to do this myself. Self fulfilling prophecies are an occupational hazard. So is a rigid belief in thinking you know what a kid should learn. I very strongly feel that the most important thing we do is build capacity to learn. We have no idea what these kids worlds will look like. I'm a wiz at WordPerfect. I know all the shortcuts and F keys. Does anyone care anymore? But I did learn how to read a manual and even more important how to hack my way through a program. This is why I am fairly technologically sophisticated. As a matter of fact it is my ability to hack my way through programs that has helped me the most. My father and probably most of my high school teachers would have been horrified at the concept of just figuring something out by educated trial and error (hacking). This is not how people learned in the 40's, 50's and 60's. But it is an important part of learning today.

What we need to say to kids every day is, you can learn, you can figure things out on your own, you can be a valuable member of society. We need to say this every chance we can because there are lots of people saying just the opposite to these kids. Even more important than saying this, we must believe it. To stand in front of a student and tell them that we are proud of them when they did nothing to deserve our pride will destroy credibility, probably for ever.

The picture above was shot on Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street. The reason I took it is that the look is school girl uniform. Do people push school uniforms because they think it will make kids better behaved or is it just one of the great male sexual fantasies. I put my money on the fantasy.