It has been a loooooong time. I’ve been busy though, working over thirty hours a week, and dealing with a Spanish class and an English class. They are taking much more effort than I thought they would, but I’m pretty sure I’ll pass both with ‘A’s or ‘B’s. I guess if that’s all there were I would be ok, I’d still have time for this shit. It’s not though, my son sees to that. His grades for English and History have been suffering bad. On his last two progress reports they sent home failing grades for these subjects.

It’s not due to the quality of the work. It is fine, when it’s done and turned in. He refuses to do it for some reason though, and it’s so bad that I have grounded him to the kitchen table, where he must sit with books in front of him regardless of whether he has homework. I’ve tried beating his ass, but he doesn’t respond. Well, he will respond at the moment, but it is still not enough to compel him to hand in his work, or do his work in class when they give him time. The only alternatives are lecturing and discussing the work with him every step of the way, which is where all my spare time goes.

Not that anyone gives a shit, but anyway….

Over the holiday I passed one of the local grades schools several times on my way out of our neighborhood. The sign in front had a holiday message. Hoping to be upbeat and positive it said, “We are thankful to server you and your children.”

I thought about that message, of course. I think the word ‘serve’ here is a bad choice. Not the fact that they serve, per se, but the statement that they serve the parents and the children. There is no doubt the teachers provide a service, and since they are providing a service there are beneficiaries of that service. The sign suggests though that the main objective is to serve the parents and students directly. I think that is wrong, and I also think it is an indication of the direction our thinking and our attitudes towards children are going. The teachers serve, but they serve the community. That should be the attitude anyway. It’s not however, as the sign suggests. They believe, or the author of the message believes, that the objective is service to the parents and children.

In my opinion, we catering to the individual families more and more, and it is only hurting us as a whole. I’ve heard this phrase, “we are becoming the age of entitlement”, meaning the younger generation believe they deserve much more than ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. They believe that these things are not only guaranteed, but that the ‘happiness’ part should be handed out, ignoring the operative word of ‘pursuit’.

If our teachers start believing they serve the children, the kids will naturally assume that somehow the education the teachers are providing should be handed to them, with no effort on the part of the student. Parents only exacerbate the situation when their children can’t or won’t perform as they would like. Rather than implore the children to do their best, they put the blame on the school or the teachers. The children of course will subscribe to this doctrine, and believe that if they are doing poorly, the fault must lie elsewhere, because that’s what Momma has always believed.

My point is this, when the teachers start believing they ‘serve’, the recipients will take advantage of the situation, and begin to believe they should take on the role of ‘master’. When this happens, they tend to believe, the students and the parents, that the education should be earned with the least amount of effort. Now I’m all for maximum gain with little effort, but an education is one area where that just does not work. The education is only as good as the effort put forth by the student, and we are losing sight to that fact. The attitude is that the majority of the effort for an individual’s education should lie with the instructor, not the instructed. The fallacy is made plain when you realize that there are three basic elements to our education system; students, instructors, and information. Optimally all three work well together, but all three aren’t critical. Information is necessary of course. Students are necessary, that is the whole point, for someone to learn something. Teachers are not critical though for learning to occur. Effort is necessary on the part of the student, because if no effort is put forth by the teacher a student can still learn something on their own, but a teacher can’t impart information if there are no students receiving it.