Public Education

By TLS

Ok, this is going to be unpleasant. Not necessarily to write, but the subject itself has become unpleasant, discouraging, and a bit of a disaster.

Public schools used to be places where a child could obtain a pretty decent education.

Yes, even decades ago there were the problem schools. The kind caricatured in movies like Class of 1984 or The Substitute, or whatever. These movies however pointed to a different main problem, drugs or violence and such by the students in an overwhelmed school.

Outside of these rare exceptions, public schools were typically at least moderately funded, had decent curricula with functional teachers, and a system that held students accountable, more or less.

That has been changing, drastically, in the last decade or so.

On top of this decline was the The Common Core catastrophe. What an absolute shit-show that was. I think this drastically accelerated the underlying problem. This one subject is too big to add to this post but essentially it exacerbated the tension between parents, teachers, and schools and ground the students up in the middle.

The denigration and debilitation of teachers. Teachers make a crap wage and they are treated like crap by students and parents. One does not become a teacher for wealth or prestige. One becomes a teacher because one wants to become a teacher. These are not people who couldn’t get a job anywhere else. These are people who intentionally went to college for years, to be able to do this job. That fact alone should be a serious kick to the head of those who blame teachers for the public school system problems.

Yes, once again, there are always exceptions. However, I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt parents, or lack thereof, are the root cause of the decline of public education. I know a fair amount of teachers, I have spoken with a fair amount of teachers about this, and I have see the problem throughout public schools.

This next section will walk the reader through what I am talking about. It primarily relates to the kids who are fortunate enough to have a parent(s) and who are actually somewhat paying attention to their child’s education. Here’s the beginning of the root cause, the instant little Johnny or Jannie doesn’t get an ‘A’ on an assignment or course, the ‘parent’ blames the teacher for not giving an A. For some reason the child is not at fault. This is pervasive.

Yes there are bad teachers. Yes there are personality conflicts between teacher and student. Yes sometimes the teacher is the problem. But, this is certainly the exception rather than the rule.

Moving on from that, let’s now consider a far more common problem, student behavior. Little Johnny or Jannie misbehaved and got in trouble. Our ‘parent’ storms into the school to demand why little Jonny or Jannie is being mistreated by the school. Again, for some reason the child is not at fault, but almost certainly is.

The teachers and schools are endlessly beaten down by self-sabotaging parents. Instead of disastrously interfering, I believe parents should instead support teachers and schools. Here’s a novel concept, hold the child accountable; this would be a far more valuable life lesson for the child. This of course, as I mentioned, only accounts for the kids with ‘parents.’

Self-sabotaging parents I believe are the bulk of the problem. However, there is also a small and devastatingly problematic percentage of kids without ‘parents.’ This encompasses everything from literally no parent(s), to better off in jail meth-head failures, as well as abusive parents, and everything in between. These sad disasters introduce a whole other set of devastating problems into the school setting.

It’s probably a miracle public education has lasted this long, but the days are almost certainly numbered. Right or wrong, for better or worse, money is being drained off public school budgets to be used as vouchers for private schools. This will only accelerate the problem until the public education system finally collapses. Worse still, public schools may actually, literally, become irrelevant temporary child repositories for the bottom of the socioeconomic barrel, in the worst dystopian ways, with all the dystopian outcomes.

This final nail in the coffin may turn schools into nothing more than holding pens for the destitute masses.

Society needs to get its collective act together. People need to wake up and take a long, hard look in the mirror. We can’t individually solve or make better national or global problems. We can however help solve problems near home. Stop blaming others, stop passing the buck, we need to hold ourselves accountable, and act in ways that improve our communities.

Lastly, stop watching reality TV, that crap rots your brain!

clip art

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/abadoned-school-class-room-chernobyl-city-zone-radioactivity-ghost-town_27001576.htm#fromView=search&page=1&position=24&uuid=7bb1f377-533d-42de-a4f0-d010651e66fe">Image by ASphotofamily on Freepik</a>