What It’s Really Like in Many of America’s Schools — Ex-Teacher John Owens’ Entertaining Essay about Bureaucratic Smothering and the Flight of Discipline and Common Sense

30 August 2011

When discipline evaporates, so does students’ opportunity to learn

Although I never threatened my children with physical discipline (as a matter of spiritual principle) — as an ex-cop I know that “hands on” is what keeps the “soc” in society. There are simply too many life situations in which humanity’s dregs dominate, if given the opportunity.

This is especially true in K through 12 classrooms — particularly in schools that have high proportions of students from families that model little but human dysfunction.

A culture that lets its bilges run it is doomed.

Our education problem is not predominantly with “bad” teachers — it’s with a rotting, self-indulgent and self-entitled culture

Virtually everything I’ve read about education reform concentrates on the symptoms of problems, rather than the cultural causes at their roots. John Owens’ superb essay about his personal experience teaching recounts the depressing result.

Note

I have written about the cultural aspect of the education problem before: here, here, and here.

Citation

John Owens, Confessions of a bad teacher, Salon (29 August 2011)

The below extracts don’t do Owens’ literary-quality essay justice.

It needs to be read in its entirety.

Here is what ex-teacher Owens had to say — after being forced out of the profession

Was this man with outstanding credentials and motivation a loser? Probably not:

During a three-decade career as a writer, editor and corporate executive, I traveled to more than 100 countries, met heads of state, and picked up wisdom that I thought was worth sharing.

When I left publishing, I was senior vice president/group editorial director at Hachette Filipacchi Media . . . . Now, I was determined to make an impact directly with kids in the classroom, and I set out for the South Bronx.

Little did I know I was entering a system where all teachers are considered bad until proven otherwise.

Also, from what I saw, each school's principal has so much leeway that it's easy for good management and honest evaluation to be crushed under the weight of Crazy Boss Syndrome.

And, in my experience, the much-vaunted "data" and other measurements of student progress and teacher efficacy are far more arbitrary and manipulated than taxpayers and parents have been led to believe.

If Mayor Bloomberg's team is determined to get rid of "bad teachers," they've succeeded on at least one count: They've gotten rid of this bad teacher. Join me on my short and unhappy experience in the New York City public schools.

John Owens, Confessions of a bad teacher, Salon (29 August 2011) (paragraphs split)

“Can’t go nowhere, if’n yer principal don’t let ya”

Owens’ school principal shot down every idea he had in regard to controlling the classroom enough to permit students to concentrate.

For example:

But with these uncontrollable older kids in the class, it was tough to control the others. And sometimes, the parents were an even bigger problem.

"Please sign the original and keep the copy," the assistant principal said one afternoon, handing me a manila folder. Inside was a letter from Ms. P to me.

It concerned parent-teacher night. I had stressed to the parents who showed up how important it is for the students to behave, to be quiet and focus on their work. I told them how I had observed a class in a wealthy school district, and how the kids just came in, sat down and got to work.

"They don't waste time on discipline, so those students get much more instructional time," I told the parents. "Those kids aren't smarter. I think the kids here are smarter. But our kids waste teaching time. Please, stress to your children how important it is to behave in class."

Dear Mr. Owens:

We are giving you this letter to file for your failure to show cultural sensitivity … One parent, in particular, complained about your insensitive remarks comparing students from our school with those of Chappaqua with what she perceived as a racial subtext, i.e. that our students -- predominantly African American and Hispanic -- do not do as well academically as the predominantly Caucasian students in the suburbs. The parent felt offended and disturbed by your remarks ….

It didn't matter that I never mentioned race or Chappaqua (a place I've never been); I was officially a bad teacher.

"Controlled chaos is not acceptable," the assistant principal told me. "You have to control the class with the force of your personality."

Ah, yes! "The force of my personality."

In addition, I was overwhelmed by the paperwork and data. Not marking papers -- but completing endless reports, memos and spreadsheets.

My corporate career had been data-intensive, but nothing like a school system based on covering your ass.

The irony is that Mr. Owens’ “kids” liked him a lot.

“Not with my kid, you don’t,” symbolizes the self-entitlement rot at the core of our culture

Why is it that American culture thinks that students and self-righteous (often incompetent) parents should escape the responsibilities of good citizenship and parenting?

Can you imagine the Marine Corps trying to produce quality marines by letting their recruits and officer trainees do whatever they want?

Or Alabama’s football team succeeding in the Southeastern Conference by tolerating such anarchical nonsense?

It is difficult to think of anything in which one can be successful without self-discipline and a willingness to cooperate with others.

Philip K. Howard’s — The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America — sums the costs of institutionalized self-indulgence

Howard and I see them same flaws in our overly legalized culture.

But, in my view, rotting culture (not law) is the root problem

Self-entitlement, self-indulgence, and self-righteousness write “community” out of society.

I agree with Philip Howard that excessive legal constraints on the exercise of leadership and institutional “doing” is strangling our nation.

But I think American “culture” is the fundamental problem. Cultural biases tend to be reflected in the legal superstructure, rather than vice versa.

I am, therefore, less optimistic than Mr. Howard is as to our ability to open law’s constraining cage — without overturning our excessively libertarian sense of self first.

Did Mr. Owens ever get an “attaboy”?

You betcha. For passing students who probably shouldn’t have.

The moral? — Where we look determines what we see

Success is all in the (deceptive) numbers, ain’t it?

PeteFree.com

What It’s Really Like in Many of America’s Schools — Ex-Teacher John Owens’ Entertaining Essay about Bureaucratic Smothering and the Flight of Discipline and Common Sense