Stonewalling
December 20th, 2007 | by Dr. Forbush |My personal experience with the our local Schools fluctuates from extremely good to extremely bad. We have lived in our town since 1998 and my four children have attended the public schools since we moved here. Over those nine years we have had the opportunity to work with some outstanding teachers and principals that have fostered enormous successes in my children’s education. Unfortunatel y we have also experienced some horribly negligent teachers and principals that seem to be going through the motions in order to pick up a paycheck each payday.
I could go into the details of each and every experience that we have had throughout the last nine years, but that would be of little use and foster little progress. In fact, two of the problems that we have dealt with over these years will never be corrected because the people have already died from diseases related to their alcohol problems. Unfortunatel y when we did confront these problems and bring them to the attention of those delegated with the responsibili ty our cries fell on deaf ears.
This time we have a new set of teachers and administrato rs and a new problem. We have seen this all before and it saddens me greatly. I personally don’t understand the resistance of the administrati on to effect change and fix these problems. But, as we have seen this all before we know exactly how this will play out. It is as if there is a script and every person plays their role and each time nothing is done the person lies about how they will be sure to look into the problem. Since the politics of the personal relationship s is kept behind closed doors under the guise of protecting a alleged suspect I will not name names in this letter. I would surely provide further information to anyone who would talk to me, but all of the administrato rs involved already know the facts and the problems, they have just chosen to do nothing about it.
In an attempt to bring discussion and light onto this subject I would rather like to talk in generalities as a matter of furthering public discourse without pointing fingers and making accusations. The people who are guilty of stonewalling already know who they are. The teachers who choose to go through the motions without doing their jobs already know who they are. The solution to the problem is not to hide the fact that there are poor teachers and administrato rs in our schools, but instead to inform them that we are watching and they should do their jobs. Unfortunatel y most of these cases only involve a few people each year. The few people that are effected know that the school year will eventually end and the new school year is likely to provide them with one of the many very good teachers that we have in these schools. What the public needs is a way to bring attention to these problems and have them solved in a reasonable and effective way.
Now that I have explained the situation in generalities I will be a bit more specific. There is a teacher in a our local school that one of my children has for a class. The teacher has basically refused to teach in almost any definition of the term. Instead the teacher has the students attempt to teach themselves by reading their textbook to themselves and take notes. The teacher occasionally administers a test of the subject matter that she copies off of the Internet. The tests from the Internet do not correspond to the textbook material, because the tests from online actually come from another textbook that covers the same material with different details. My child has complained to counselors and the different levels of administrati on. The one time that an evaluator came into the classroom to evaluate the teacher the teacher conducted the class more closely to a traditional discussion style class. Obviously the teacher knows what she is doing would be frowned upon. However, the behavior continues and even with the complaints to the administrati on by approximatel y half of the students in the class. The students have signed a petition and presented it to the administrati on, but the administrati on requires each case to be dealt with individually and not en masse. The students continue to bring the issue to the administrati on with no results. Finally during the last meeting with the administrato r the students were told the matter was already brought to their attention. When the students asked what was going to be done the administrato r explained that nothing was needed to be done.
So, the sad situation that we have in the our local schools is portrayed in this example. The administrati on complains that they want the students to excel in academics. They publicly claim that they have hired the best teachers. And, they have hired some very good teachers. Unfortunatel y they have also hired some very poor teachers that should be removed from their responsibili ties. We should not be paying teachers to shop online while the students outline the chapters in their textbooks during class time. The administrati on doesn’t want to know about the failures. Perhaps they want to claim ignorance. Perhaps they are too lazy to fix the problems in the schools. Perhaps the law ties their hands and they really can’t do anything about this. There are solutions to every one of these problems. We can fire the administrato rs that are too lazy or incompetent. And, if the laws are in the way, then we have an obligation to change the laws. The students deserve it and our future society is built on the education of these students.
Sincerely,
a concerned parent of a concerned student
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Don’t forget what Stephen Colbert said, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit
Tags: BIO, Children, Education
