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| Del Hanson |
Recently I overheard two well-meaning gentlemen chatting at a coffee shop, both discussing their impressions of the sad state of affairs in our public schools. One said, “There just isn’t any discipline. Those kids just run wild all day. They are rude and inconsiderate. We send them to school and look what they get. They get to learn how to be jerks.” The other fellow sipped his coffee and nodded in agreement, “They’re ruining society,” or something to that effect. I wasn’t sure who the “they” was in that statement and I wanted the first guy to take the time to walk into my wife’s first period English class and chat with a great group of young people, who most assuredly do not run wild all day. I have been around students all my life, and the image presented by movies, the media, talk-shows, and bloggers isn’t reality. It isn’t even good fiction. It is conformed, shaped and molded to meet the needs and inadequacies of the persons perpetrating the misstatements. 
Schools reflect society, not the other way around. While these two gents are entitled to their opinion, which was for the most part wrong, it would nice if people who run for office and/or inundate the airwaves or column space with incomplete or wrong information would get out and personally visit the schools, walk the campuses, and talk to students. What a novel idea. But that takes time and initiative, and a sound byte is worth a thousand truths. While there are some who think it is the schools who shape society, a few of us tenaciously hold to the idea that parents interacting with their children in family units shape society. Schools can have a mighty effect, but it is not they who are the engine of decency. Anyone knows how difficult it is to manage a birthday party of six ten year olds. It can be hell. Now try it on a daily basis with twenty-seven excited, exuberant fourth graders. Their teachers deal with it every day. Oh, they can manage a degree of decorum and hold the lid on, but they don’t have time or resources to raise the children, too. Far too many parents expect the teacher and the school to raise their kids for them. Many pairs of adults are very good at birthing children, but a disturbing number are lousy at actually raising them.
Allow me to insert a disclaimer. There are many caring, involved, and intensely nurturing sets of parents or single parents who do a wonderful job of raising and loving their children. I have personally interacted with them and they made all the difference in the success of their kid’s life. And God Bless them! However, for many parents, school is a government sponsored day care system which provides special activities and programs for their offspring. The dichotomy of both extremes in classrooms makes the job of teacher much more difficult than merely dispensing information for the endless series of standardized tests.
Speaking of society, just today I browsed several prominent blog sites on which participants can comment on a topic and to each other in almost real time. The rudeness and incivility is almost beyond comprehension. Grab the kids, secure a loan from the bank to pay for it, and take them, if you dare, to a college basketball game in most large arenas. The environment isn’t usually the model for decorum and politeness. Flip through the channels and watch daytime television, if you can suppress the gag reflex long enough. Guys and girls, and guys and guys, and girls and girls, and unknown beings with unknown beings cavort unmarried under the sheets with reckless abandon. Go to a political “town hall” meeting or watch as immigration marchers file by restless, angry groups of protesters and step back behold the incivility of the moment. It is ugly. It is rude. It is our American society in which our students who sit in rows, packed 30 to a room in many cases, are immersed. Students reflect society, not the other way around. Because politicians and concerned American citizens in coffee shops cannot readily effect changes on society, but can, however, write and pass laws or at least gripe about education, they focus their attention on schools. Like the extinct Dodo bird on the island of Mauritius, mainstream education stands motionless and clueless as the arms and clubs of our civilized society beat it to death, without it putting up a fight. So back to our gentlemen at the coffee shop, whose concerns and misconceptions are played out in thousands of other klatches across the country on any given morning. To them, children in school are molded and shaped by their teachers, who often lead them dangerously away from the tight path planned by their loving parents.
Were it only so, it would be easy to fix. The truth is that most teachers do a near miraculous job of teaching the standards and benchmarks, preparing students for infinite batteries of mind-numbing, fact-regurgitative exams, all the while trying to provide a modicum of love, empathy, and guidance (without actually touching the child, mind you) to needy kids--their kids, for seven hours a day. Society has thrust upon the shoulders of teachers the responsibility to raise children as well as instruct them. There aren’t the resources or the minutes of a day for a teacher to fulfill that charge. But it makes for great fodder for animated discussions at the coffee shop. Just who will raise them, then? We have abrogated that responsibility to the I-pod, cell phone, and the television, but we can always blame the schools.
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