The Seven Keys of Ventoozlar

In a combination of being busy, a small bout with that old devil depression, and a derth of topics, I’ve not blogged all week.

When I finally got a thing in mind, Chuck already blogged about it. And proving that we occasionally share one mind, I pretty much agree. In summation, being a teacher is hard. Kids are assholes. And this lady is not all that wrong-minded to point it out.

Now, I think she’s trumpeting her position as the last bastion of sanity in an insane world a little too loudly. As much to win over the court of public opinion. One way or the other — and I expect the law will bear her out, so it’s important to gird her image now — she’s going to have to go back to work in a school system she just famously slagged.

May as well try to do so as a holy crusader returning from exile.

I don’t know Natalie Munroe, but I know people who do, and they seem to think she’s a total twat.

Be that as it may, the school has no conduct policy that covers blogging, or online social media of any stripe — emblematic of how far behind our school system actually is. All told, the infraction is fairly mild, she never named names, or did much more than anyone else who might blog about a co-worker they hate.

And she’s right.

Kids are self-entitled little assholes, crammed into too-crowded rooms where one person is charged with shouting over all of them about math or history they don’t care about for three quarters of an hour before they go back to finger-banging each other in the hallway.

Then their parents come in and shield them from all criticism because they hated being told they weren’t good enough when they weren’t; all while our Puritan-based governance refuses to educate them about why their pants are on fire, or to acknowledge that they are aswim in a drug culture that speaks more directly to them then any teacher will ever have a chance to.

It’s a losing battle, and as I saw on the news this morning, we’re losing it by half in Philadelphia School Districts. The drop out rate is 50% up in this piece. For reasons ranging from: the kids are bored, or bullied, or afraid to go, or falling behind the curve, or already on drugs or in gangs which have way more influence over them, or just because they’re kids with no concept of tomorrow so they throw away their today.

That’s not a failing of teachers.

That’s only partially a failing of the kids or their parents.

It’s a failing of the system.

Too old to speak to modern youth, and too over-burdened to change.

They knew classrooms were too crowded ten years before I went to high school, and nothing has been done.

Natalie Munroe is probably not going to be the match that starts the revolution or anything. But seriously, the Grecian style needs to go, and we need to find a way to drop some science on these knuckle heads before they teenage-pregnancy their way into our nation’s future mediocrity.

We need to stop fighting video games, and rap music, and every generations’ counter culture and get it to start working for us.

Verdict:

Anyway, so I don’t really have much else this week, but I’ll try and do better next.

Tags: Natalie Munroe