I am the product of a public school education. Allow me to qualify that statement. I am the product of a public school education from the Memphis City Schools system. Not only did I receive most of my elementary and all of my secondary and post-secondary education in Memphis, it was at what was (and possibly still is) arguably one of the worst schools in the city.
Most of the boys I dated attended county or private schools. Upon learning that their precious son’s new girlfriend attended an inner-city school, they’d ask things about me like, “Is she rough?” The inherent human predisposition to judge a book by its cover has prompted me to change the subject whenever a new acquaintance would ask me where I went to high school, and in some cases, to lie about it altogether (although I stopped doing that when I said I went to a high school that my conversation partner attended at the same time I was supposed to have been there). Today, when I tell people where I attended high school, they look at me incredulously, as though they’re surprised I’m walking upright and have mastered basic sentence structure.
Yesterday, on the front page of my city’s major news publication, there was an article about improved Algebra scores from my alma mater. Not only did these kids improve their scores, many of the students taking the test scored in the advanced range. Impressive? Heck yes!
When I was a student there, I had an Algebra I teacher named Mrs. Cutter. Everyone over 20 is ancient when you’re 13, but she had to have been reaching retirement age, as she taught both my mother and one of my aunts back when they were in school. By the time it was my turn to experience firsthand the exuberance they told me about, it had been replaced by something far less warm and fuzzy. When reminding everyone of the order of operations, she had long since stopped referring to the cute cardboard cutouts adorning the bulletin board behind her desk. Instead, she’d yell at us while nervously grinding the chalk into dust as she wrote it on the board. The class was overcrowded, so those who struggled were left to struggle. I was in that group.
In the years leading up to junior high, I excelled in all subjects, but my favorites were math and English. I was the sixth-grade Math Rodeo champion and looked forward to the wonders of Pre-Algebra that would be revealed to me once I started the seventh grade. The teacher, an absentminded war veteran who had lost the correct configuration of fingers on his left hand to form a permanent “Hang Ten” sign, simply did not teach. He made novel attempts at getting us to do bellwork, but we were an enterprising bunch. Before the second six weeks had begun, we figured out that he wasn’t actually checking the work as he came by our desks. Instead of wasting precious note-passing time, we simply changed the date on the bellwork each day. The most work we ever put into it was when we had to recopy the equations onto a new sheet of paper because the eraser had worn the original paper too thin to withstand further abuse. Somehow, I still managed to ace all of the tests, and at the end of the year, I received my recommendation for the next year’s courses. I’d be going onto Algebra I.
Algebra I was considered honors math for eighth graders (now, my daughter’s fifth-grade friend has algebraic equations in her math book). I had honestly never really had a problem until that year, in Mrs. Cutter’s Algebra I class. I swear to you, on the first day in her class, she saw right through all of us who had goofed off the previous year, and she was hellbent on breaking us, one by one. I managed to just get by until the end of the first semester, when my Cs became Fs, and I had to be put back in Pre-Algebra before I failed the eighth grade. Ninth grade was Algebra I all over again, and Mrs. Cutter seemed even more determined to ruin me than she had the year before. Where was this lovely woman my mother and aunt raved about? I did pass her class the second time around with a low B, but it took absolutely everything I had to do that. Although I made it all the way through Calculus by the time I graduated, my confidence in my mathematical prowess has been lacking ever since.
It’s been nearly twenty years since I first had her, so I’m positive she’s retired now… or at least, I hope she is.
Nothing I’ve written here has much to do with the subject at hand, except maybe tangentially. After college, a few of my friends went on to teach at Kingsbury. From what I understand, there are several new teachers on staff who are very excited about educating. And because of that passion, things are starting to happen. Good things. It’s just a shame that really great teachers are so hard to come by because of all that’s stacked against those who set out to teach.
With low teacher salaries, overcrowded classrooms, and students coming from homes in which parents don’t want to parent, is it any small wonder that it’s hard to find qualified, enthusiastic teachers? We can pay athletes and actors millions of dollars for dribbling a ball or making a movie, but for the task of shaping young minds, we don’t even pay teachers enough to get by, in most cases. Where is the logic in that?
Discuss.
There are a few thoughts I have:
Ultimately, the quality of the teaching will reflect the quality of the student body. There are, of course, individual exceptions, but on the whole if you assemble a brilliant, vibrant staff of teachers and beat them year after year after year with hostile, ignorant students, oblivious uncaring parents tainted by a sense of entitlement, and borderline competent administration you will find that most of the world class staff will either find their spirit defeated or will find a different school to teach at.
Or they will find a job in private industry, which brings me to thought two.
Teacher salaries are low compared to athletes and actors, yes, but in most locations it is still a living that is more than many people make in that area. And let’s be honest: I could teach (and someday, perhaps I will… at a private school to be sure), but I can’t play any sport at an elite level, nor can I act at all. However, schools don’t compete with hollywood and the big leagues for teaching talent. Schools compete with the common private marketplace, and in the battle for the coveted math and science teacher, this is where the schools lose.
Because most schools pay a math/science teacher the same or almost the same as an english or history teacher, the schools lose. Not to diminish the work of an english teacher, but there is little competition for an english teacher’s skills outside the world of education. A math teacher? Engineering, finance, accounting, petroleum: All these industries desire the knowledge and skills of someone with a math degree. Science degrees have a similar story. If you want to attract good teachers in those technical fields, you will have to pay them an a level with what the private market pays. To do that, perhaps you need to balance your budget by paying other teachers less.
There is also the factor, while discussing pay, of job security. The fact of the matter is that a teacher has to be grossly incompetent, or nearly so, so be dismissed (assuming no criminal activity). Even then the odds of finding new work almost immediately in a nearby school district is fairly high (especially if you are a math or science teacher). This sort of job security does come at a price in terms of salary. This level of security also does little to encourage innovation and creative competition in the workplace. I’m not suggesting an environment where you need to were armor and watch our for knives in your coworkers hands (no, just the students’, eh?), but a degree of fear for your job goes a long way in making the workplace productive and innovative.
So, all we need to do to fix the schools is make the kids care more, make the parents understand that the kids are there to learn (and not that the teachers are there to teach), find better administrators, pay teachers according to their marketable skills to attract better talent, reduce the job security level… oh, and find about 33% more teachers and build a few more school buildings.
Personally, I’m a fan of sending most of the kids to trade schools instead of full on high school. they’d develop money earning skills, probably care a lot more about their classes, and they’d free up space and teachers for the kids that want to pursue a higher education.
And i foyu hadn’t noticed, there’s actually a tight supply of trade workers (welders, carpenters, machinists, etc…)
Not to diminish the work of an english teacher, but there is little competition for an english teacher’s skills outside the world of education.
Don’t I know it.
awesome! awesome!! very well put. i couldnot agree more.
i am serious. you have no clue how much i agree.
i want to write more, but really am pressed for time.
thanks for writing this and saying it out loud.
What’s funny to me about this is that while I feel the same way you do (cautiously optimistic but still mostly pessimistic about the public school system as a whole), Jeff is 100% the opposite. One of the things that would keep us away from that .0001% of desire to have children is that I would pretty much insist on finding a way to afford private school. I, like you, am the result of a half-assed public school education fueled by teachers who had long since stopped caring about anyone not chomping at the bit to be valedictorians. I needed help and encouragement, and instead was met with only encouragement to scrape by. I was told to take classes I knew I would pass, rather than given the skills to succeed in a college environment.
Jeff, on the other hand, did incredibly well in a public school environment. He went on to graduate college with high grades and now has a career that I would never even dream of achieving. This makes it close to impossible for him to see my failure as anything other than my not having tried hard enough.
I suppose it boils down to one of those “the grass is always greener” types of situations.