Where did that rant-ito (um, Spanglish for "tiny rant?") come from? Through my multiple clickings today I found this article in The Atlantic Monthly that I really, really interested me. It's written by a part-time, adjunct professor who teaches the nontraditional, returning students in like a community college, and is saddened and frustrated with being the bad guy in "the system." S/he is in charge of teaching English 101 and 102-type classes to people who are already working full time but need some post-secondary credit for promotions or to get into some other field. The students are also mostly described as illiterate. And so this writer is faced with being the bad guy: having to fail people that were accepted and perhaps led to believe that they would suceed when really they can't, and don't. The article says:
"No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment."
What is so depressing about this article is that it rings true: we all know that college is not for everyone. The writer of the article even mentions how 9 out of 15 students in the class fail. And I can see where this would hurt the most: not the universities, who get their tuition money whether or not the student passes the class, but the teachers and the individuals themselves, who are the ones who have to deliver and accept, respectively, the bad news. The article continues:
"America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns. "
I found this article through a link from a teacher's blog called http://teachingprofessor.blogspot.com/ and one of the comments from that post was from another teacher who also is in charge of "numerous students who do not have the necessary skills to be in college" and is terribly tired of it. She says,
"The writer of the article is not blaming the students personally for their failure, but s/he is exhausted at taking the blame. And so am I - so exhausted in fact that I am leaving teaching. I can no longer look over a class of 24 students and know that as many as half of them will not be able to achieve the level of writing proficiency they need to go on, that failing my class will be the reason they do not go on in their programme or receive their certificate. "
Um...remember the part where she says she's leaving teaching? She's sick of watching people not make it.
It's too much for me to ignore. Obviously something similar will happen to me. Even from a purely statistical perspective, it's clear that not everyone I will teach will suceed. So it seems it will overtake me either way, pushing me away from teaching so I won't have to tell people they're failures, or keeping me on but in a gradually more embittered and depressive state.
Raise your hand if you still want to be a teacher!
And yet I do. Which is exactly my point: I still don't believe it. I can't understand the notion of giving up or giving in because I haven't yet begun.
What do these scenarios mean for a junior high or high school teacher? I mean, the problems these college professors had were from "poorly prepared students." That only seems to make my job that much more important, and essential, in preparing students for whatever lies ahead. Ok, so not everyone will go to college. But I can still prepare them for other things they might need to come up against in their lives. And I can prepare those who are heading toward college to suceed in future classes. That's my role.
One last thing I really appreciated from the Atlantic Monthly article is when the author noted the growing assumption that everyone in the American workforce in general should be better educated, how there is a sense that "we want the police officer who stops the car with the broken taillight to have a nodding acquaintance with great literature. And when all is said and done, my personal economic interest in booming college enrollments aside, I don’t think that’s such a boneheaded idea." Me neither!!! I especially love when the article lists a couple of ways that literature might be able to broaden perspectives of people in all areas of the workforce:
"Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? The health-care worker Arrowsmith? Should the child-welfare officer read Plath’s “Daddy”? Such one-to-one correspondences probably don’t hold. But although I may be biased, being an English instructor and all, I can’t shake the sense that reading literature is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you. If I should fall ill, I suppose I would rather the hospital billing staff had read The Pickwick Papers, particularly the parts set in debtors’ prison. "
Not gonna lie: I haven't read all the aforementioned works of literature, though I have heard of (most of) them. But I can see where the argument is going, and I appreciate it: that "reading is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you."
Remember, that's why I'm teaching English: like milk, it does a body good. :)
2 comments:
I thought the Atlantic article was perfectly titled. Your title also encapsulates the view you set forth, but I'll take some issue with it ;)
I think there is a scale from idealism to bitterness, but we're not irreversibly destined to move from the former to the latter.
You're young and idealistic and rightly so; without your idealism you wouldn't get anything done.
Yes there will be those that won't learn, and those who can't learn. But this is nothing new--life has always been hard, and as long as there's been school, there have been failing students.
This reality might merit a host of revision and programs and attempts to help these students, but the one thing it certainly does not do, is invalidate the value of teaching those who can and will learn.
I think you might find more success with the approach of "idealism in the midst of bitter awakening."
Or, in a succinct and familiar phrase, "you can't do everything for everybody, but you can do something for somebody."
(Or, in a longer and borderline-cliché story form, make a difference to a starfish
So maybe 9 out of 15 fail out of a class and it's beyond your control. But what of the 6 that didn't?
I wish I had your optimism.
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