As is my routine, I listened to the Jason Lewis Show on my way back from town today. Per my routine, I have a blog post to publish. The topic today is the teacher's strike in Chicago. Now by no means do I think striking is a good things when a kid's education is on the line. It is not helpful to student routine, to development of a good course of study, or student moral. What I do think is is wrong is Mr. Lewis's understanding of teachers and his broad strokes painting us. Since he chose, for the most part, to paint in the broad stroke signature of conservative radio hosts, I too will swath my way through his understanding of the educational sytem and my rebuttle. Had I gotten through..or shall I say waited long enough..my response to his understadning would have been a series of questions that go something like this:
If all teachers have it so made,why are you, Mr. Lewis, not a teacher?
If all teachers have it so made, why does the average new teacher leave within the first five years?
If the teacher retirement is so great, why do those same teacher leave five years into service before gathering any retirement?
If all teachers have it made, why am I eating peanut butter sandwiches, driving a broken car, and living in the crappy apartment that I do? Mind you I am paying off my student loans on time.
What is the most stressful part of your day Mr. Lewis? Mine is wondering if I am going to get hit by a student with anger issues.
You get paid by how much advertising you are able to sale. The more listeners you get, the more the advertising works. The more it works the more you get paid.Ok, what do I do as a teacher to produce more students?
Yes, I am to produce better students. How then, if are an education expert Mr. Lewis, do you suggest I do so? I only have a Master's Degree in education. Please give me some pointers.
How did you, Mr. Lewis, come to your place in stature in the conservative talk radio host world? Yes, you will want to argue that you did it on your own, but you had to have at least had a high school education to get your first job as a DJ. Oh, you have a Master's Degree in Political Science from what's that?!? A public university... I bet your professors there were wealthy aristocrats, just like mine at my small, liberal arts, private school..shoot just like me and my high paying public school job.
My guess is Mr. Lewis's screeners did their jobs and were able to stall him long enough to wait me out. That's ok. I will send him my question via email, which he will not read. It always baffles me when people, who know very little about education or the production of, want to speak as though teachers produce widgets. We produce, but it is not easily defined what we produce. Yes, skilled students, but what is a skilled student?
A statistic thrown around was 15% of students in Chicago read at or above grade level. Yes,that is terribly poor, but what is grade level? Grade level reading is an arbitrary limit put on a set of skills from antiquated times. Yes my students struggle to read, but they can do things on the computer the average Jason Lewis listener can only dream of...and yes I know pretty well what the average Jason Lewis listener can and cannot do on the computer. They can do things that educated people struggle with in things like math and science. They have complex reasoning skills that the likes of Jason Lewis would love to have.
They study the Constitution in my class, and the political system. They learn economics and gain viable knowledge about economic systems, all information that the average Jason Lewis listener would fall short on..with the exception of what Mr. Lewis tells them about such information. Sure I will accept the yoke of a radical liberal government teacher who teaches a loose intrepretation of the Constitution and lean toward govermnet intervention in economic depressions, but I only do so to counter balance the mostly un-educated drival spewed forth by the likes of Rush Limball (I refuse to learn how to spell his name) and Sean Hannity.
Finally I close with this: Why are those kids not reading at grade level? Could it be they've not eaten breakfast? Could it be that they are beat when they get home to the point they don't want to learn anything at school, they're just glad to be away from home? Could it be, for older students, that they are working to support their family, and not being the dead beats conservative talk radio hosts are always wanting to paint them as? These are factors we as teachers have to deal with on a daily basis, AND teach a subject that is complex and difficult to understand. So I think Mr. Lewis would be glad he didn't answer my call. He might not have liked having to answer my question.
No comments:
Post a Comment