Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Substitute for Logic

For the past two years I have been substitute teaching. The money is not good, but I do get a great deal of enjoyment out of interacting with kids when given the chance to actually teach.

What I do not enjoy about substituting is the fact that I find most students to be grossly disrespectful of teachers, disorganized and unwilling to listen and follow direction. It is not unusual for kids to come into a classroom, notice that a substitute is there and rudely ask "what's your name" or "are you a sub." I'll stand in front of the class sometimes for five to ten minutes just waiting for kids to take their seats and terminate conversations. Several kids usually wander in late. It is not unusual for half the kids to not have necessary books and materials for class. Often kids will bring food into class or play with their text messaging or IPod.

I doubt that most of these kids are required to give much respect to their parents or any adult. They come into the classroom feeling entitled to be there instead of feeling privileged. I doubt that they are given any direction with regard to respecting adults at home and view teachers as lesser adults. I wonder how many of these kids value anything when they are carrying around IPods and IPhones and wearing expensive trendy clothing.

It doesn't help that most teachers dress casually in class, don't bother to take care of themselves physically and asthetically and refuse to require respect from the students. Many of the classrooms are good examples of sensory overkill with all manner of garbage pasted to the walls, desks that are stuffed with papers and overpriced video instruction systems that add little to lessons and garbage on the floor. There is little innovation. I'm seeing books I read when I was in school forty years ago.

When did education become a joke? Except for a few students who get it and parents who discipline their children to do well in school, the vast majority of kids are not getting educated, they are being provided day care.

It is unfortunate that funding for schools is becoming scarce and so many teachers, staff and administrators are losing their jobs. However, maybe this is a good time to take a long hard look at how these schools are really run. Let's start with a dress code for kids, a closed door policy at the bell with those tardy excluded and a mandatory behavior code that imposes the obligation on children to respect adults. Let's require teachers to wear business clothing and clean up their classrooms and organize.

I doubt if I would last long as a regular teacher. Just last week in a literature class I read a passage from a pulp novel to illustrate how a good author can use descriptive language to convey a picture. A couple of students who didn't like the fact that I required them to sit in their desks, listen to me read and basically act respectful, complained to the principal that the novel, which pales in comparison to what these kids view on the Internet and cable was too graphic. That's what innovation and creativity gets you in today's schools. The inmates are allowed to run the asylum and the classroom.

Monday, April 19, 2010

William Ayers, Please Go Away

Now Bill Ayers is going to sue the University of Wyoming for not letting him speak. If this is a breach of contract case and Ayers wants to be paid, I support him. If he is just trying to make some social/political statement, then I wish he wouldn't.

Fact is, we all must live with our pasts no matter how much good we do in between then and now. Ayer's past has a little more infamy that most of us, so it is no surprise that it has followed him into the present. Apparently, Ayers has done some good things in the field of education. Glad to hear that, but if the activist itch is still there, then he is going to have to play the cards he dealt himself.

I don't see any reason why Ayers can't go to Wyoming and stand somewhere on campus, set up a soapbox and talk all he wants. I don't think UW (or is it WU) can prevent him from doing his free speech thing there. If he is interested in doing something political by suing the University, then I wish he wouldn't. Ayers got a new life of sorts by virtue of his association with Obama. Maybe he was content to be underground for all these years and didn't want his new found notoriety. Regardless, he seems to be getting that ole' urge to be socially active again. I wish he wouldn't.

Bill, please go away.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

The Cubs and The City

I became a Cubs fan because my father was a Cubs fan. As a boy, I would hurry home from school to catch the end of games on WGN and then go out in the yard and replay what I had just seen by turning the picnic table on it's end and endlessly throwing a rubber ball against until I heard my father pulling in the driveway and I would have to return the picnic table to it's intended use.

I grew up believing in a sports team. I grew up believing that the owners, players and managers truly wanted to win for their fans and played for the love of the game. Boy was I naive. The truth about professional sports is that it is a business, nothing more, nothing less. For all the lore and storybook magic that authors want to assign it, professional baseball is grown men dressed up in costumes, performing for money and being paid by a corporation to make money for it.

If the fans show up, as the Cub fans do year after year, there is no incentive to improve the product. The Cubs' ownership makes only the changes they feel are necessary to generate enough interest to keep the fans duped and coming out. They run the corporation the way good businessmen/women should run a corporation, to benefit and profit the shareholders. Why pay a player ten million when you can pay another player five million and pocket the difference? The players put forth the effort necessary to preserve their professional status and to keep getting paid. It is no mystery that players in the final year of their contract seem to always have "career" years. It is also no secret that when you sign a player to a guaranteed contract for multiple years you can expect that player to underperform and pocket the cash.

I don't begrudge players getting whatever compensation they can. They are the elite at what they do. When teams fail to achieve, as the Cubs have mastered, it is the fans fault. I haven't paid to see a major league baseball game in many years. I refuse to reward mediocrity and give my money to some corporations shareholders who sell an inferior product.

The midwest was once described as the place where settlers, settled because they were too scared to go west and too tired to return east. This is relective in many of the things one sees in Chicago. The sports teams seem to fear success yet relsh mediocrity. The politicians are allowed to steal from the people because the people are too afraid to challenge them or too tired of the endemic greed and scandalous activity to do anything about it. They have their guaranteed contracts. Other cities build beautiful stadiums, Chicago builds architectural nightmares and passes off a crumbling ballpark as "quaint" because nobody cares.

Mediocrity is everywhere in Chicago, from the lame effort to bid the Olympics to the goofy "off broadway" theater that is sold, to the wasted landscape of the lakefront. It wouldn't matter except for the fact that maybe we deserve better. Maybe there should be better schools and city services. Maybe there should be a real effort to curb gun violence, street gangs and drugs in the inner city. Yet, like Cub fans, the people just keep coming out and supporting the same mediocrity. People die, kids get cheated by the school system and the shareholders/politicians are the only ones that profit.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

News at The Speed of a Tweet

I don't use Twitter, but from what I know of Twitter it seems to represent a new cultural phenomenon, in that, it encourages those who have trouble putting together a sentence a way to communicate without all the hassle of having to actually pen a thought and use grammar. Little creative thought is necessary to just report random ramblings and opinions can be expressed with little to back them up. However, I suspect something more sinister is happening here.

Twitter also is reflective of how news is handled in our current culture. What amounts to a major news story seems to have a shelf life of only two to four weeks and then...puff; something else comes along to replace it. There are exceptions, of course. Health Insurance reform (not health care reform) was around in the news for months upon months, thanks to a Congress that cares more about getting/staying in power, than about representing the interests of the American public. But, most stories like Tiger Woods, Sandra Bullock, fade into oblivion in no time at all.

I suppose we should be happy that the tabloid nature of media news is not that resilient. After all, the stories do get old in a hurry given the fact that there is little about them that is real news. Those caught up in scandal only have to wait it out and let the "date rape drug" nature of the public consciousness kick in. What does amaze me is that we hear next to nothing about Iraq, Afghanistan and stories that should matter. The whole "sky is falling, we are all doomed" banking industry collapse thing also seems to have gone away. Toyota seems to have weathered it's product liability/public image storm and John Edwards is yesterday's powerful man self-destructs story.

This is disturbing in the sense that we are not only forgetting history, we are forgetting current events. This must explain why Illinois governors continue to follow their predecessors to prison and why celebrities don't seem to understand that text messages can out them and women scorned are not to be trusted not to hire Gloria Alred and appear on Larry King.

The focus on the public is directed by the media content that the public is given. Unfortunately, the media gives us Tiger Woods and does not give us the arcane machinations of our legislators. What this means in the grand scheme of things is that the truth, albeit out there, is getting harder and harder to shift out from the garbage that the 24 hour news cycle feeds us. I need to see less Obama as the Joke signs and more of who in Congress is getting what amount of money form what insurance company/bank/defense contractor. Journalists, like politicians are more concerned with keeping their jobs and careers going than investigating and finding the truth. I get it, but then they should find something else to do with their lives, since freedom of the press was the trade off for integrity in investigative journalism. Without the minions of the media out there digging, we are exposed to all manner of chicanery.