So, I’m on the river and fishing is slow. I look up from tying on my fifth different fly and there it is, on the other side of the river, the slow, shaded riffle I’ve been looking for. I’m certain the trout are stacked there, but to fish it I have to brave 40 feet of strong current that could, if I slip, whisk me away. The rewards are great, but so is my fear. Should I stay where I am, content with fewer and smaller fish, wondering what could have been, or should I take the challenge and cross to the Promised Water?
While that scenario might be the beginning of a tall fishing tale or a “This Happened To Me” adventure story, it is really a metaphor for the decline of educational performance in K-12 schools. It is my conviction that increasingly it is the social culture that surrounds education that determines the strength of the current students must overcome in order to cross the river to educational success.
Broadly taken, American culture itself is no friend of education or intellectualism. Frontier values still seem to define us, including our penchant to demean intellectual gifts and glorify physical ones.
We are obsessed with sports and violence, and the less difference between the two, the better. We snicker when the popular jock heaps disdain and even abuse upon the lowly “nerd.” Television and movies also create a world where appearance and personality invariably trump intelligence.
A more recent cultural inanity is the idea that we all need to be connected, 24/7. Teens can’t go anywhere without their cellphones or iPods, including school classrooms, and then they act insulted or incredulous when asked to put them away. Watching kids check their cellphone messages under their desks while you’re lecturing on Thoreau’s philosophy of solitude and simplification pretty well sums up the situation.
Many “phonies” are so busy being connected that they’ve disconnected from the real reason they’re in school.
Moreover, our culture has created in young people a distorted sense of entitlement. They want good grades, but don’t always want to do the work to earn them. Some are outraged when they get a C on essays that 10 years ago I would have failed. They neither recognize their own deficiencies, nor take responsibility for their sloppy work. Evidently, they are entitled to an A or B if they’ve handed it in!
But then again, can we blame them when we see mediocrity and even downright failure being rewarded lavishly in the upper echelons of business and sports?
Finally, and most important, American culture tends to devalue those who work in K-12 education. Why? Well, we work with kids. How hard can that be? And then there’s that whole altruism thing: Teachers shouldn’t go into teaching to make money. That’s fine, but why must teachers sacrifice themselves and their families financially upon the altar of social good? Certainly weak and/or ineffective teachers should be weeded out post-haste, but the rest want to be paid what they’re worth, just like everyone else.
News flash to America: If you want better schools, smarter students, higher test scores, a more prepared workforce, hire better teachers. How do you do that? Pay them more. There, I said it, and if it sounds soiled and mercenary, so be it. We’re simply losing too many good young beginning teachers because they can’t make ends meet, and a lot more, I suspect, before they even start.
Let me brighten the scenario a bit by saying that in 30 years of teaching, I have met scores of students and colleagues who have made me proud to be a teacher, and that teaching truly does have rewards above and beyond money. In addition, teenagers aren’t necessarily responsible for a culture that spoils as it victimizes them.
Nonetheless, the “currents” create a disheartening disincentive for all of us involved in education. The students who do make it across the river have parents, teachers and schools to thank for giving them the strength to buck the flow of a beguiling but ultimately destructive popular culture.
One can only hope that more of these intrepid, enlightened souls will still find good reason to become teachers.
Mark Moe (brktrt_80231@yahoo.com) is a retired English teacher.
