The State of Education in America

Oh man, it's been 4 weeks of training, 3 weeks of summer school and I've come to this one lone opinion:

....

Well, let me do a little background information first before I get to that.

First off, they say everything in education goes in cycles. Whole that's all rad and everything, I'm of the opinion that things change because they don't work or were the wrong strategy to begin with. However, I've been a teacher for 3 weeks now, so I'm going to yield to those with more experience and give them the benefit of the doubt.

So, the current strategy in education is to put the fun back into fundamental...well, not really. But the whole yelling at the kids and trying to scare them and get them to back down just doesn't work. Generally, I agree with that. Kids know they hold the power for the most part and a lot of getting them to do work is them understanding they have to fall in line, because that's what you do, because they generally want to learn, which they do, and that they laugh when you yell...only making it worse. I witnessed this when I was in high school, as my senior year, the freshman clearly were of another generation that the seniors...I think I may have been a little old fashioned too at that point because I generally thought no matter what that what my teachers thought of me would affect my future. Kids today, not so much.

Kids today know they can get you fired when you step out of line, meaning they know their own boundaries of what they can get away with and basically what you can too.

Last week, I had my first "success" in the classroom when I was able to control a very disruptive class and teach a coherent lesson. Ironically enough, this was also about 30 minutes after I had another first experience: being cursed out and threatened by a student.

This kid said he did his work, did part of it, but had some serious attitude. So after checking his notebook, I lobbed it back onto his desk, where it landed on his forearm. The conversation is as follows:

"What the fuck do you think I am, a dog?"
"No, I don't think you're a dog. Do you think you can speak to me like that?"
"I can speak to you however the fuck I want."
"Do we have a problem?"
"Yes we have a fucking problem, I'm not a dog, you don't throw things at me."
"Do we have to call home?"
"I don't give a fuck what you do."
"OK, let's go call home."

As we get in the hallway, he drops the, "I don't give a fuck, I'll punch you in the face."

I believed he would and this was reinforced by my principal who stated that he was just loony enough to do that.

So for the last few days, I've thought about this incident, as well as other issues in "classroom management" or lack thereof. The kids pretty much are controlled whenever they want to. My feelings don't count. They talk, talk, joke around, talk, you get the point.

So after these incidents, 4 weeks learning in a classroom, 3 weeks teaching in a classroom and hearing countless times that education philosophies and strategies come and go in cycles, I now have this opinion:

If the kids don't have anything to fear, we need to put the fear back into education...we should be allowed to beat the ever loving shit out of the kids. They speak up and act out because they fear nothing. They phased out this whole barbaric strategy years ago, but maybe it's time to bring it on back. I've thought about this and I think I'd put a serious beat down on a 12 year old.

Now I ask you: there was a comment on a previous post about whether or not I should curse on this because I'm a teach now...in comparison to this post, anything else I shouldn't do?

Am I kidding? Yes...well, half-kidding. No this will never/should never come back, but I think I understand now why it's hard to control a class and how it's easy to lose control.

Yikes, I think I went too far....

WAIT, watch this:



You remember that "How a Bill Becomes a Law" clip on "School House Rock"? Well, now it's to Soulja Boy....maybe that person should be...well, you know.