Boomers & Sooners, Part Three ~ Who’s Your Daddy? Why, It’s David L. Payne!

June 15, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

If you’ve ever been a teacher, you may have experienced a moment like this:

One of your darlings is off-task and taking others down with her. After a few verbal redirections, you tell her to move to a seat further from her audience – probably near your desk.

“No no no no no! I’ll stop! I’ll stop! Just one more chance! One more chance!”

“Those chances have passed, anonymous sample child – let’s go. Come on.” You motion firmly, but with style.

“Pleeeease?! Look – I’m working!” She waves a piece of paper around vigorously, believing this irrefutable evidence of focus and commitment. I’ve always found that part weird.

You are firm, but not angry. “C’mon. NOW.” You tap the destination desk a few times for emphasis.

At the first sign of acquiescence, you continue whatever you were doing, and efficiently guide the class back on track. It may be several minutes before you notice she hasn’t actually moved.

“Child’s Name. Seriously. Over. Here.” Motion motion motion.

“I’m not talking anymore! I can’t see over there! I’m being good! Just one more chance and if I mess up, you can move me! Please?!?!?? Pleeeeaaaaassssseeeee??!?!?!!!???”

Because you are a master of classroom management, you overcome this distraction yet again, and this time you wait until she’s physically moving before you once again guide the rest of the room back into the edu-zone. Now the learning can happen!

A few moments later you realize she’s moved exactly one desk over. If you’re lucky, it’s at least a diagonal move, which you COULD count as two desks.

*sigh*

At this point you have two choices. (1) Give up on having class in order to kill this child dead in front of God and everyone as a warning to others, or (2) pretend this was exactly what you intended all along, or at least an acceptable compromise. “OK. Good! Now stay put!” Firm gaze, hint of wry smile so they know your scolding isn’t personal and you’re still the cool teacher they secretly adore.

The issue is not bold defiance or soft incompetence. It’s a calculated risk on the part of the student – who knows you. She’s betting you won’t go nuclear on her – no referrals, no yelling, no hurling heavy objects. She’s ready at any point to back down and comply – at least until your attention has shifted. She’s also sure you have things you’d rather be doing than power struggle with her, and that you don’t actually dislike her – even if she is making you crazy at the moment.

She ends up sitting pretty close to where she began. Even if she moves today – all the way to that desk next to yours – tomorrow she’ll come in and sit where she started, waiting to see if you say anything and begin the struggle anew.

That’s the ‘Boomer’ movement. That’s David L. Payne.

Like many who make history, David L. Payne had an unwavering conviction that he was right. That sort of bold confidence can be rather irritating, but it’s typical of those who inspire others to follow them.

In Payne’s case, the question wasn’t always who’d follow so much as who could keep up. A hunter, scout, politician, and businessman, he was certainly never at a loss for things to do. Then again, he doesn’t seem to have stayed in the same place for more than a few years at a time… so there’s that.

He had a common-law wife and a son who was, by definition, “out-of-wedlock.” He volunteered to fight for the Union as soon as the war broke out, then stayed in the army to help ‘civilize’ the Great Plains after. He fought under Custer and knew Kit Carson and Wild Bill Hickok.

He had a reputation for ‘understanding’ the ‘Indian character’, which seems to have meant he was pretty good at the ‘killing them’ part. Fortunately for him, this kind of thing was in great demand in the decades following the Civil War.

Oh – and he was tall. 6’4” or thereabouts.

Why all the background? Because he’s my daddy – and yours too, if you’re an Okie. Don’t be ashamed! Own your statehood! I mean, come on – it’s not like you’re from Florida or something.

After Charles Carpenter bailed on the young ‘boomer’ movement, Payne stepped up in a big way. He sold theoretical claims to plots in the Unassigned Lands and talked up efforts to move in and truly settle the area. Unlike Carpenter, he actually accompanied most of the forays into Indian Territory (I.T.), taking on the same risks and hardships as those who followed him.

He was removed by the U.S. Army, but he went in again. He was removed again, then went in again. Removed, return, removed, return, removed, return, removed…

You may notice a pattern.

Notable was the lack of meaningful consequences for these repeated violations. He was threatened, and eventually fined (he didn’t pay it), but he wasn’t locked up. He wasn’t killed. He was just… removed.

And then he returned.

He KNEW the U.S. Army didn’t actually want to shoot anyone over this land. He was betting they wouldn’t even actually imprison him – or anyone else – for any length of time. Not for THIS.

What they WERE willing to do was march his party back home time and again, often by long, dry routes, on foot, with limited food or water. What they WERE willing to do was embarrass or frighten them.

Ironically, the most humiliating removals were those handled by Buffalo Soldiers – black units organized in the west primarily as ‘Indian Fighters’. While typically more professional and better behaved than their white peers, the idea of hungry white homesteaders being escorted off of red land by black soldiers was particularly difficult for many to bear.

And then he returned.

Payne had dealt with the law and government and the military before. At any given moment, he was willing to comply. They had the guns and the authority, but he had unlimited time and patience. And – this part is key, so pay attention – he believed he was entirely right.

It wasn’t simply that he thought he could ‘get away with it’, although he did. It wasn’t just that the Boomers he organized and spawned really truly needed this land, although in their minds they did. He believed without reservation that these lands were public lands, and should be opened to white settlement – enough to want to force the issue.

Payne wanted a trial to determine whether or not the Unassigned Lands were still reserved for unspecified ‘Indian’ use, or should be thrown open to white settlement on the same terms as other lands in the west.

Payne believed.

He may have been wrong. Stubborn. Annoying. Tall. But whatever else he was, Payne acted with the firm conviction that if he WERE breaking the law, the law NEEDED to be broken in order for constitutional mechanics to engage and his actions to be vindicated – not only for himself and his subscribers, but for the greater American good.

This, in my mind, sets the Boomers apart in an essential way from the Sooners with whom they are so unjustly joined in commemorative song. I’m not vindicating the Boomers, but I am suggesting that – at least at the leadership level – they acted in accordance to their understanding of our foundational ideals and constitutional law. They believed they were in the RIGHT, and stood stubbornly by this until vindicated.

The Sooners, on the other hand… Hmph.

David L. Payne died at breakfast on November 28th, 1884. Nearly five years later, on April 22, 1889, the first of the infamous Oklahoma Land Runs began opening up the Unassigned Lands to white settlement. This time the settlers were allowed to stay.

Tips For Parents (To Defeat Your Child’s Teacher)

May 28, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

I’m often amazed at the interactions I have with parents. By and large they let me off WAY too easy. Most tend to be focused on their child and what’s best for them in the long run, with each of us assuming the other to be relatively competent and doing the best they can with the time and resources at their disposal. Some of them have actually become Facebook or Twitter friends, so I see pictures of their dogs and family vacations. We’re not moving in together or anything, but it’s generally been warm and fuzzy and one of the reasons I love my job.

In other words, parents – you’re doing this all wrong.

Allow me to draw on 15+ years of experience in my district and working with teachers around the region to help you maximize your effectiveness when advocating for your child with teachers or the school. These are tricks and tips that other educators don’t want you to know, because they’ll give YOU the upper hand in defeating ‘the system’.

Feel free to bring this list with you to meetings or hearings, but do me a favor and leave off any identifying titles, will you? I don’t want them to know I’ve violated The Code.

Tips for Talking to Your Child’s Teachers

1. Don’t talk to your child’s teachers. Why waste your time on the underlings when a little research allows you to directly contact the District Superintendent, Director of Curriculum, Assistant Director of Operations, and whatever an ‘Elementary and Secondary Compliance Manager’ is? Express your outrage and make sure they know WHO YOU ARE (i.e., someone far more important than whatever else is taking up their time and energy).

No one gets to these lofty positions without understanding that most of the people they’ve hired along the way are incompetent and screwing over kids like yours. A few paragraphs elaborating on this fact will form a bond of sorts between you – facilitating their cooperation and perhaps leading to a special meeting fast-tracking your concerns. They probably don’t have much else to do anyway – I mean, it’s not like they teach or anything, right?

2. Avoid including anyone in your correspondence who might actually know your child or the circumstances which prompted your concerns. Nothing complicates matters faster than having all concerned parties in the same room at the same time, sorting out whatever triggered your outrage. Possible allies include building principals (be careful, though – they sometimes ask the teacher for their input on these things), friends who know or are related to teachers, or – best of all – other parents. You wanna know why your child couldn’t turn in that work after the due date? Ask while thirty villagers wielding torches and pitchforks swell behind you and see how THAT improves ‘communication’.

3. Keep in mind that your child is holy, and has the wide and balanced perspective of the very best 13-year olds. Sure, she makes you crazy at home with her whining and complaining. Yeah, he does tend to pretend he honestly didn’t know he had to take the trash out again THIS Thursday, just like the past hundred Thursdays. But once out of your sight, they are your sacred charges to defend and protect at all cost – reality be damned. It is inconceivable that your child under any circumstances would present things in such a way as to cover their own behind. And the suggestion s/he may perceive reality through the lens of a hormonal or genuinely confused teenager from time to time? Inconceivable.

4. Conversely, assume any teacher who holds your child to any standards at all is incompetent, unreasonable, and personally out to get your darling. Come on – if they were THAT smart, they wouldn’t be teaching, right? The only reason someone remotely qualified in their field would avoid getting a REAL job and spend the day dealing with parents like yourself is their love of ruining young people’s lives. Yes, you signed the syllabus with all of those silly ‘policies’ and ‘expectations’ in it, but surely it was understood those were for OTHER people’s kids. Your goal should remain unwavering: to instill in your child the permanent conviction that rules and standards are for those around them (‘under them’, if we’re being honest). Your baby is different – always. They’re the exception – always.

5. On that note, let’s not forget who this is really about – your child. There’s always someone out there trying to drive you apart from your baby, spreading their maliciously smooth rhetoric about development, maturity, and taking on personal responsibility. Fine. One day, maybe. But NOT today, and not in High School, or College, or those first few Nobel-worthy careers, or planning your dream wedding, or in that first marriage, or –

The point is, maybe one day your baby WILL have to handle things by him/herself. How much more important, then, that you model for them NOW the value of outrage, of accusation, of stubborn refusal to compromise, or even really listen, and of disparaging all who oppose you to their peers and anyone else who will listen? We in the teacher business call these ‘life skills’. Should your child ever, God forbid, face adversity or confusion or frustration in college, or at the workplace, or in their relationships, they’ll know to circle the wagons and dig in! I can’t hear you, nah nah nah nah! Nothing says ‘promotion’ or ‘devotion’ like shrieking accusations and personal attacks.

You think reality TV rules the airwaves because those people are BAD examples? Think again, Mrs. I’d-Rather-Read-A-Book.

6. Exploit weakness. Every time a teacher bends a policy to accommodate you, or an administrator responds with more than five words to your eleven page email of demands and complaints, it’s a sign you’re winning. A weaker parent would appreciate the gesture and back down – they’d “compromise.” Don’t fall for it. You’ve got your inch; double down and grab that ell.

7. Finally, teachers and most everyone else up the chain of command are always busy, often to the point of being overwhelmed – especially late in the year. Use this to your advantage. The longer your emails, the more you can drag out the meetings, and the more people up and down the ladder you can get involved, the better. At some point chances are good they’ll give up fighting for your child’s academic soul and simply give you what you want to shut you up acknowledge your correctness. They know this only increases the chance that you or those in your circle of influence will repeat the process every time you’re bored or frustrated or that fool Bachelor gives the wrong trollop a rose, but still they weaken.

Even better, word will get around to avoid any real standards or expectations regarding your child – it’s just not worth the costs, especially with 150 other kids who need our help, our best lesson planning, our most creative adjustments, and our well-rested, back-in-perspective attention. You’ll have won, and your child will be safe – at least until some foolish, idealistic educator slips and treats them just like everyone else again.

That’s OK, though. You’ll know what to do.

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Teach Like You

May 19, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 3 Comments

I’m a fairly narcissistic fellow. I don’t mean to be, it’s just that I’m vain and self-absorbed. At least I have the skills, style, and cojones to make it work for me. I make no apologies; every rose has it’s – oh, are you still here? I hadn’t noticed.

There’ve been a slew of books and workshops in recent years promising to help you teach like a pirate, like a rockstar, like a hero… I received something rather spammy recently promising to help me become a more exciting presenter and unlock a fabulous career leading teacher workshops. Just call Robert in Wisconsin at ###-###-####!

I’m not knocking any of these books or workshops. I haven’t read or attended any of them, but I see happy teachers carrying on about them on Twitter and such… they sound great.

Except the one with Robert in Wisconsin. WTF, Bob?

It’s just that I don’t want to be a pirate, or a rockstar, or a hero. I want my kids to learn a little history, ask some better questions, and maybe learn to like reading a little. And I want to do it as… me.

I’m pretty entertaining, and I have a degree. That should buy me some leeway, yes?

Of course, you don’t need to buy books or go to conferences to hear how you should be doing everything differently. There are no shortage of researchers scolding us for forcing our kids to recite from their McGuffey’s Readers and practice multiplication tables on their chalk slates, or whatever it is they think we do.

Seriously, if I read one more heavily-footnoted interview with yet another person who’s discovered that worksheets have limited effectiveness and some people are boring when they lecture, I may become violent. Can we steer some of the funding for these redundant studies into something more useful – maybe fresh blue ink for the mimeograph machine or another History Channel Documentary on VHS?

They’re not all bad, of course. Many make some fascinating observations and connections. They challenge us to reconsider some of our assumptions about kids and how they learn, or ourselves and how we teach.

I’m a huge fan of rethinking what we do in our classrooms. I make a decent living leading workshops and peddling my teaching philosophy, sometimes for edu-entities and sometimes just as lil’ ol’ me. We should ABSOLUTELY step out of our comfort zones from time to time. It’s unforgiveable to plan our class time around what we have saved from LAST year rather than what might work best with THESE kids THIS year.

And there are some GREAT teacher books! That ‘Weird Teacher’ one has me so challenged and encouraged and validated all at the same time that there were actual tears at one point. Occasionally I’m even inspired by something shared by state edu-staff, or my own district superiors. Turns out there are a bunch of really smart, experienced educators around who love helping the rest of us impact our evasive darlings.

Sometimes their ideas are better than mine. And sometimes research is right about stuff. I have much to learn about some of my students and how they think, feel, and perceive – so here’s to training, challenging, changing, and reviving.

BUT (and I have a big ‘BUT’)…

I hereby declare my official hostility towards anyone who gets paid to tell teachers they’re doing it wrong. I don’t care if they’re researchers, reformers, authors, or bloggers – kiss my class agenda, edu-snobs.

My ethical obligation to regularly seek better ways to reach more kids more deeply does NOT validate your desire to lecture me or talk down to me or my comrades. Quite honestly, if your research and ideas and pedagogy are THAT great, you wouldn’t need to be so condescending about it – we’d run to you hungry for more.

Which, by the way, is pretty much what many of you keep telling me about my teaching methods. You know – if I were doing it right, I wouldn’t have to work so hard to coerce and browbeat them… like you’re doing to us?

You see, sharing ideas, stories, successes and failures, speculation and goals, are what professional development and collaboration and edu-blogging are all about. Maybe this time I’m at the front of the room and next time you’re showing us something your kids created, but at no point is it about being better, or smarter, or anyone ‘fixing’ anyone else.

Because at the end of the day, teaching is as much art as science. It’s as much educated guesswork as strategy. Given that you’re you and I’m me and that quirky new girl is the quirky new girl, consistency may be limited.

More significantly, my kids are my kids and your kids are yours. We may be in different rooms, different districts, or even different states, confronting different cultural variables, working with different resources, building on very different backgrounds and expectations… we’re lucky we ‘speak the same language’ at all.

When I’m in my classroom, my number one ethical and professional obligation has absolutely nothing to do with your studies, your strategies, and sure as hell not your tests – mandated or not. I’ll certainly consider the input of my department and my building leadership, but even those should take a back seat to what I think and feel and believe will be best for MY kids, today, right now.

And you have the same obligation.

I hope you play along in my workshops and that you consider my thinking, just as I appreciate yours. I hope you’re open enough to risk and change and stepping outside comfort zones to evolve as an educator and a professional, even when you’re getting by just fine already.

But when it’s go time, follow your gut. Do what you know is best for you kids, now and down the road. Do it however you think will best work for them, from you. Don’t think about your evaluations, your VAM, your scores on this or that assessment, or even your career. If there’s testing to consider, then consider it – but not at the expense of what your gut tells you is best for your students.

We’ve become SO comfortable doing things we know are bad for our kids because they’re ‘required’. Maybe we’re afraid, or maybe we simply hide behind what everyone else is doing. Is this such a rewarding career in terms of money, power, and glory, that we’ll sacrificing the very things that made it matter to begin with in order to keep it secure? Must be a helluva extra duty stipend.

Teach like a rockstar if that works for you – or like that Freedom Writers lady or Marzano or To Sir, With Love. Challenge yourself and those around you to evolve, to up our game, and to WIN THEM ALL somehow.

But don’t you dare do anything that doesn’t ring true in your gut because I told you to, or because it’s required. Don’t you dare dismiss your inner strategist because what you’re envisioning might be stupid, or doesn’t align with something official, or might get you into trouble.

We’re trying to save kids in an unsaveable world. We’re trying to do the impossible with the insufficient. I’m not sure how many ‘right’ ways there are to attempt such madness. I’m confident the ‘wrong’ way is to try to do it as someone else.

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Confessions

May 7, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 3 Comments

This is not a year I’ve been proud of.

I’ve had a few over the past sixteen years that have sucked for reasons largely outside my control, but this is the first time since those first few semesters that I’ve felt almost entirely responsible – not as a cause, but as someone who knew better in terms of MY responses, and didn’t do it.

For… *sniff* – the children.

In years past I’ve been a pretty consistent hard-ass – quality of work, organization, due dates, etc. Like most teachers, exceptions abounded with circumstances. I’ve lost count of the number of individual deals I’ve made with students in difficulty, whether weird personal lives or academic struggles. If they’re trying, we’ll work something out.

I’ve had to stifle overt hostility every time we’re told from the golden podium to give 50% to students who haven’t shown up or done anything yet because some kid in an anecdote had a tough October and we’re too jaded and dillweedish to let them ever recover.

“Damn – they’re on to us! We got into this profession so we could cackle maniacally at the unjust failings of children! We especially like to crush the ones living in their cars, working three jobs, and taking care of eleven siblings even though they don’t have fingers or eardrums. Fail, Enrique! Fail!”

Apparently I don’t always stifle it.

But over time, reading enough tweets, enough blogs, enough articles, I softened. I weakened. I caved. Some of it was genuine doubt whether I could possibly be right and so many people smarter than me be wrong. Much of it, though – and this is where the self-loathing begins – much of it was laziness. The time and effort necessary to keep pushing every kid, to remember who was absent when and what that means for their make-up work and who had surgery and who was on a cruise, and the stories from other teachers about the parent calls, and emails, and meetings, and administrators, and…

Most headaches can be easily avoided if you pretty much accept anything a kid gives you, whenever they give it. I lost a battle drawing some lines with a parent years ago (by following district policies, no less), and haven’t wanted to do that again. Every time I’d watch what other teachers were going through simply for holding to basic expectations, I’d pat myself on the back for knowing better than to go down THAT road again.

I knew I was condemning my kids to much harder lessons down the road because I wasn’t willing to fight for their academic souls here, this year – when we all still basically love them and want to help them. This is the safest place in the world to struggle, or even fail a little. Not later, not somewhere else.

But I wouldn’t see it – their eventual awakening. I wouldn’t know how much harder it would be later. But I do.

That’s the wound; here’s the salt:

This ‘flexibility’, this over-generalized ‘compassion’, didn’t work. Not for behavior, not for grades, not for anything. The more flexible I became, the more students were mired in a swampy mixture of all the stress one would expect from academic and personal overload but the actual productivity one would find in a 19th century San Francisco opium den. They were doing less and less, but freaking out about it more and more.

What they eventually produced wasn’t usually very good, and often lacked context or use. Despite my most vehement exhortations, I couldn’t convince the majority of those so mired to keep up with what we were doing right now, in class, rather than dragging through that content review from last month’s quiz that they never seem to finish before they lose it and start over.

“What does it matter WHEN they learn it?” Turns out it matters a whole damn lot.

True student collaboration became impossible because only a slim majority of students were prepared to contribute in any useful way. Class discussions or even direct instruction became less and less effective because it’s hard to build on something a third of them haven’t learned yet, and might never.

History may never be easy, but it’s much less onerous when it’s experienced in order, and learned actively, together. Those opportunities vanished as I gradually ended up with 140 students in 40-50 different places, some analyzing and writing with great sophistication and others who’d pretty much ignored weeks of foundational work but suddenly wanted to get their ‘Skills Grades’ up and who had to be taught from scratch.

It wasn’t just academics. I let too many little stupid things slide early in the year because I was trying to be more understanding of their individual quirks and needs and such. When I did assign something punitive, like lunch detention or some sort of service work, I’d quickly lose track of the paperwork as some would attend, some wouldn’t, half were absent that day anyway, and others were in detention already from another class, and… and…

Eventually I just returned my energies to lesson planning and teaching. I now have a dozen kids throughout the day who aren’t “bad kids,” but who are 15 years old and still behave like a special needs group of 3rd graders when the spirit moves. I can’t skip the paperwork trail of consequences and just throw them all out in frustration (nor would I wish to), and there are four weeks left.

So I’m making do.

The worst part of it is, I’ve failed my best kids. Their grades are fine, but they learned early on that most of my energy, most of our curriculum, most of their headaches would be dictated by the bottom 20% of the class. I suppose this in many ways is preparing them for the ‘real world,’ but I hate creating so many cynical little Republicans before they can even drive.

I’ve failed my ‘challenging’ students because they’ve learned nothing, other than that they can pretty much do what they want and still move right along – thus reinforcing the very thing we complain about from our middle schools, who have about as much power to change that system as we do.

I’ve failed my ‘average’ kids because they weren’t pushed beyond quiet mediocrity, staying below the radar and not causing trouble. Not exactly the motivational poster I signed up for.

This freshmen class came to us as one of the least motivated, most pampered, quick-to-collapse, easily distracted, helpless, hopeless, shallow little nurslings I’ve ever encountered en masse, and I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing in challenging or changing any of that. There are some diamonds, believe me – and I love them all, somehow. But I fear for the rest if reality ever catches up.

Maybe it won’t. Maybe our society has evolved enough that the consequence for irresponsibility, ignorance, and apathy, is food, clothing, shelter, and days spent drifting aimlessly and checking their phones obsessively. Maybe it’s not a teenager problem, but imminent national collapse. And maybe I can’t change any of it.

But here’s what I CAN do. I can resolve next year to risk seeming merciless in my expectations, rigid in all things responsibility-ish, and demanding in my demeanor. I’ll fight the fights over standards and behavior, with or without official backing. I’ll lose some of them, but I’ll go down kicking and screaming – not because I’m an asshole who wants kids to fail, but because I love them. I want better for them. I want hope for them. And because I know from long, painful experience that the only true fulfillment or growth comes from actually accomplishing things. Actually learning stuff and doing things.

I’m sure we have about a dozen motivation posters to that effect in this hallway alone. Maybe they’ll be my defense.

I may not succeed. I doubt my humble efforts will prove to be some kind of miraculous solution. But I hope by May 2016, I’ll at least have offset some of the scalding awareness that I’ve become part of the problem.

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Classroom Management, 1920’s Style (Part Two)

April 24, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been revisiting the chapter on “Classroom Control” from Vol. I of the 12-volume The Class Room Teacher (1927-28). We were introduced last time to a very listy list of possible methods:

(1) No control, wherein the children all do as they please.
(2) Teacher control, wherein rules are made and enforced by the teacher.
(3) Group control, wherein rules are made and enforced by the group working together for a common purpose.
(4) Unselfish self-control, wherein each person considers the good of the whole.

Has much changed in 90 years?

NO CONTROL – Example:
The teacher is attempting to carry on a class recitation with one group of children while the others are supposed to be studying. Two or three large boys are lying on the floor with their feet propped against the stove. They are reading fiction which does not contribute in any way to their assignment. They later show a lack of knowledge as to the lesson content. Several girls are holding an animated conversation about the ways of securing pictures of the favorite “movie” actresses.

This passage is golden.

The chaos meant to be implied by those ‘large boys’ with the feet on the stove would be a dream come true in many classrooms today. And ‘reading fiction which does not contribute in any way to their assignment’ is almost an oxymoron in 2015 – ANY reading is cause for cupcakes and stickers. But don’t sue me when you burn your feet.

And aren’t you curious about what sundry, presumably devious means might have been utilized to secure those pictures? Can you even imagine a time you weren’t inundated with celebrity photo spreads every time you had to pick up a few things at the grocery store? Or when girls worried about illicit pics meant b&w head shots of actresses? Monday, Tuesday, Happy Days…

The children who are trying to study have to dodge continual volleys of chalk, paper-wads, and even an eraser now and then. A note of unsavory character is passed about among the older children who laugh heartily at its contents.

In case we’re not sufficiently horrified by the stove thing, here comes a barrage of projectiles and dirty notes. I KNEW we should never have allowed pens and paper in the classroom – such technology has no place in school without careful controls in place! It’s too distracting!

The room is in an uproar; the recitation is a complete failure; but the teacher smilingly assures the visitor that she believes in “freedom.”

Oh god, I know those teachers. I thought they were products of the 1970’s – I didn’t know they existed almost two generations before.

Discussion:
The result of no control is always chaos; children are denied the right to feel happiness in real achievement; habits and attitudes are formed during these years in the school room which may tend to make of them, in later life, unreasoning, selfish, and lawless citizens.

This is a point which could stand to be made more often and more loudly today – the deepest happiness, the most meaningful learning, real character comes from actually accomplishing something. Guide them, yes; encourage them, definitely; but unless they’re allowed actual risk – a real opportunity to fail – they’re being deprived of a legitimate opportunity to succeed.

Why is this so easy to understand with our football teams and debate competitions, but so controversial in reference to academics?

Perhaps it might be well to state that true freedom would not allow such an infringement upon the rights and liberties of others.

There’s a year’s worth of socio-political debate for you.

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True freedom is something which should be earned and bestowed only upon those who can use it wisely. All teachers should be very careful to distinguish between real freedom and merely allowing children to do as they please. Real freedom leads toward right and true happiness; while allowing children to do as they please leads toward wrong and toward future sorrow.

“True freedom is something which should be earned and bestowed only upon those who can use it wisely.”

Today I believe that would qualify as a ‘controversial statement’. Keep in mind that the 1920’s were still enmeshed in Progressivism – regulating the sausage factories and establishing national parks and such. It was also the age of more direct control of all levels of government by the ‘common man’, in hopes this would prove, um… purifying.

With this increased role of government in solving society’s problems came efforts to prevent recurrence of those same ills. Why bandage the wound but leave the sharp edge exposed? Why support a humidifier and a dehumidifier in the same room? It seemed only reasonable, for example, to require sterilization of those unable to provide for themselves or their offspring.

If it’s cruel to allow stray animals to continuously breed (thus perpetuating their collective misery), why allow those among our own species who’ve clearly demonstrated an inability to care for themselves to make increasingly destructive choices about procreation? “If you want me to take care of you, there are conditions. If you want to make your own choices, you’ll need to learn to take care of yourself.”

It seems so reasonable in regards to student management. As long as we don’t let what we’re doing in school impact real life…

ABSOLUTE TEACHER CONTROL – Example: When the class assembles on the first day of school, the teacher firmly informs the children that they are there for business and she is there to see that they attend to this business of learning. In order to accomplish this, certain tasks must be finished each day before they leave school. Anything which interferes with the work of school, such as talking without permission, whispering, giggling, or writing notes to one another will be carefully noted and punished by the teacher.

Ah… so it’s a math class!

Ever after the children study the lessons assigned by the teacher, answer her questions, and accept the punishment she doles out for misdemeanors and errors. They usually do no more than they are asked, and frequently they misbehave when the teacher is not looking.
The teacher’s life is one of constant watchfulness. Her profession is not teaching; it is policing. She must be continually alert to catch the law-breakers, fair enough to pronounce just punishment, and persevering enough to see that punishment once pronounced is executed.

And a charter school at that! (Erin – I’m kidding! I’m kidding!)

Discussion:
Such a method is far preferable to the preceding no-control type and should be used, especially by the inexperienced teacher, until she can determine the type best suited to her class of children. If used by a teacher who is always just and fair, the class achievement is usually good and the children rather happy. If, perchance, the teacher is a benign tyrant, the children will often vote this type of control the best of all, because, like many adults, some children dislike sharing responsibility and making choices.

Whoah, there, Sherriff – I was with you until that last little bit.

As colorful a term as ‘benign tyrant’ may be, it’s a bit too loaded with connotation for my taste. One of the things too easily overlooked in our kneejerking any time those high-structure charters are discussed is that some students, in fact, do very well with so much structure.

There’s absolutely a problem when it’s abusive, and the racial issues inherent in some of these schools bother me, too – but let’s not write off the idea that there’s some security in knowing your day will be organized and methodical, your teacher tough but fair, and that the rules apply pretty much the same way to everyone, every day. Especially if you don’t have this in any other part of your world.

As to “sharing responsibility and making choices,” recall that only a few lines before, freedom had to be earned. I know all you ex-hippies out there with your ponytails and elbow patches want your lil’ charges to discover the universe in their own special and wildly individualized ways, but there’s a name for that kind of freedom – “chaos.” Or, if you want to be more social-political-science-historical about it, “life in a state of nature.”

Feel free to look it up.

Under this system the children usually do the right thing, not because they know it is the right or why it is the right, but because they are trained to obey blindly. The great danger here lies in the fact that they may form habits of following blindly, and later may unthinkingly follow unworthy leaders.

Wouldn’t THAT be a shame?

No teacher should be content to use this type continually unless she is handling groups, who, because of limited capacities, will always be obliged to “follow a leader.”

Ah, she means (insert whatever political party you don’t belong to), doesn’t she?

As soon as possible each group of children should be given a share of the responsibility for its own mental and moral achievement. The teacher should covet the position of guide and advisor rather than one of policeman.

Therein lies the rub. How do we transition students appropriately from compliant to independently responsible? I don’t know about the feet-on-the-stove issue, but THIS one resonates a century later. All too well, actually.

Next Time – “The Ideal Solution,” in which it is revealed that…

Daise was sobbing too much to talk, but the indignant lad and a dozen others could tell. John had given Daise a branch of Japanese cherry blossoms to bribe her not to report him. Before the investigation was over it developed that eight-year-old Daise had become richer by a box of raisins, two candied cherries, and a chocolate bar – all for not doing her duty.

Dear god – it’s pure madness in there. And ladies, never trust a boy bearing Japanese cherry blossoms.

RELATED POST: Classroom Management, 1920’s Style (Part Three)