Irony: Legislators explain character education
I was both gratified and horrified by an article in the Newspaper this morning, “Tell the Truth. Be on Time. Don’t cheat.” It starts out with, “All are life lesson most would agree [Our State’s] kids need to learn. At home. At church. This year, the Legislature decided [Our State’s] schools needed to do their part in helping students become better citizens.”
Oh really? Up until now, it would have NEVER occurred to me that a) character education might occur at school b) that schools have a stake in the type of students they turn out and c) that our students might really need it lately.
I liked the quote from Hoffman, a K-5 social studies specialist in Minneapolis, “I don’t need a curriculum to do that… I don’t think you can make kid have integrity by teaching the word… I think the teachers consider it to be part of their responsibility and professional competence to know how to help kids develop their character.”
I don’t think the Legislature needs to mandate schools to teach “character education”, I think schools and teachers already teach character in a thousand little ways. The law makers just need to allow teachers to do our job- unimpeded by parents and bureaucracy. If character education were mandated, there would be so much haggling over what type of “character” should be taught it would take a thousand years wrapped up in a meaningless partisan battle. (i.e. see current social studies standards for our state…now there’s a success!) Teachers would end up with a neat little packet indicating to us what “benchmarks” in “character education” we needed to infuse into these kids with the expectation that we trump all other influences in their lives.
The first step in character education is to find some way of giving that neat little packet of “benchmarks” to parents. Number one should read as follows: You will not teach your offspring anything by trying to make life overly easy for them. Advocating, excusing, or lying for them when they make poor decisions will only prompt more of the same behavior. At that point you are essentially modeling behavior for them that you don’t want them to learn. Case in point this week at the High School:
The Weekend: Grading projects on Vietnam. Find that a few of my students had seemingly “borrowed” a few paragraphs from websites to put in their paper. They must have “forgotten” to let me know that they themselves didn’t really write that part… No big deal, because at least they wrote their name on the top of the paper- that was original thought, after all. Plus, they had done it over Memorial Day weekend, how could I really expect them to slave over a paper they had put off until then? There was money to be spent, liquor to be drank, and fun to be had- there was no way I really expected them to forgo instant gratification and work for something, right? I mean that is soooo totally unfair.
Monday morning: Hand papers and corresponding website print outs to administrator. Start Academic Dishonesty proceedings: Zero on paper, suspension, etc.
Monday afternoon: Several phone calls to parents, meeting with students, meeting with administrators.
Tuesday morning: More meeting with administrators, it seems one of the students when shown her/his paper was confused how s/he wasn’t allowed to have used some one else’s information (yeah, and I just fell off the turnip truck yesterday, too)-was I sure s/he knew the difference between plagiarism and using information?
Tuesday morning: (while supposed to be teaching class) Counselor of one of the “borrowers” tries to explain that s/he deserves some considerations because this has never happened to him/her before. Maybe we can work something out…
Tuesday morning (still): Meeting with Parent and Administrator (while my class is hanging from the rafters and watching The Price is Right on TV) Parent of said student is angry that we are penalizing this student for an honest mistake. S/He just forgot the quotation marks or the citation in their paper. (Yep, and I forgot I was holding up a gun when I took that money from the bank). Can’t I just take a few points off? I am being too harsh. I am supposed to be teaching kids to learn, not suspending them so they cannot. (Yep, then let me go teach my class right now and let me teach your student, and apparently you, a lesson about personal responsibility and character- by the way, for that there needs to be consequences, not entitlement.) Dad the enforcer doesn’t win, he is furious. Who has said no to him lately?
Tuesday late Morning: Dad sends in the principal to talk with me. We talk. The principal and I talk about how I didn’t cheat, the student actually did. We also talk about how I didn’t set the board policy on academic honesty, the School Board actually did.
Tuesday Noon: Mother of said student calls and berates me for being a horrible teacher and, by the way was I fired from the last school that I taught at? Why is this my first year at Edina? Do I have something to prove to her student? It was really only a sentence that s/he forgot to cite. Her other child did this at college and only got a few points off from the professor. Why wasn’t I being more reasonable, more understanding? I had to hang up the phone after the woman couldn’t control the extremely rude and disrespectful things she was yelling at me over the phone.
Tuesday Afternoon: Several more meetings with administrators. I was congratulated for hanging up on said mother.
Wednesday Morning: Meeting with principal again. Re: Must turn in final exam of said student once it is graded. Parents are worried that I will grade meanly now that they have done everything to me besides send a sniper to take me out and he has to have something to prove them wrong. (That’s right. There is no professionalism within teaching. It is about vendettas, favorites, and secret hand shakes.) The parents are worried, of course, that I am as dishonest as… well… their student, and… well, as they are.
Funny. Luckily for them and society at large, I was brought up by a family where truth and responsibility reined supreme. I went to a school where the teachers were professionals and the students were the ones that had something to learn. I went into teaching to make this world a better place, not to get rich, to have a big title, or to be mean to students for the hell of it.
I come to work every day to teach. Teach kids history, teach kids how to read and write, teach kids to analyze, and yes, to teach kids how to tell the truth, to be on time, and not to cheat. I can do that when other people let me: be in the classroom, enforce consequences, and let students learn from both successes and failures.
When students leave my classroom for the last time, (as my seniors did today) I want them to leave knowing how to work hard, how to give of themselves, how to take chances, and how to be honest and real. Not to lie, cheat, and steal just to get where they want to go. It would be great if some parents around here saw it the same way.
So I will end my rant with this: the state legislatures should start by telling parents to get on the stick and start helping teachers and schools to do what they have been doing all along- educating their kids in subjects AND in character.
Oh really? Up until now, it would have NEVER occurred to me that a) character education might occur at school b) that schools have a stake in the type of students they turn out and c) that our students might really need it lately.
I liked the quote from Hoffman, a K-5 social studies specialist in Minneapolis, “I don’t need a curriculum to do that… I don’t think you can make kid have integrity by teaching the word… I think the teachers consider it to be part of their responsibility and professional competence to know how to help kids develop their character.”
I don’t think the Legislature needs to mandate schools to teach “character education”, I think schools and teachers already teach character in a thousand little ways. The law makers just need to allow teachers to do our job- unimpeded by parents and bureaucracy. If character education were mandated, there would be so much haggling over what type of “character” should be taught it would take a thousand years wrapped up in a meaningless partisan battle. (i.e. see current social studies standards for our state…now there’s a success!) Teachers would end up with a neat little packet indicating to us what “benchmarks” in “character education” we needed to infuse into these kids with the expectation that we trump all other influences in their lives.
The first step in character education is to find some way of giving that neat little packet of “benchmarks” to parents. Number one should read as follows: You will not teach your offspring anything by trying to make life overly easy for them. Advocating, excusing, or lying for them when they make poor decisions will only prompt more of the same behavior. At that point you are essentially modeling behavior for them that you don’t want them to learn. Case in point this week at the High School:
The Weekend: Grading projects on Vietnam. Find that a few of my students had seemingly “borrowed” a few paragraphs from websites to put in their paper. They must have “forgotten” to let me know that they themselves didn’t really write that part… No big deal, because at least they wrote their name on the top of the paper- that was original thought, after all. Plus, they had done it over Memorial Day weekend, how could I really expect them to slave over a paper they had put off until then? There was money to be spent, liquor to be drank, and fun to be had- there was no way I really expected them to forgo instant gratification and work for something, right? I mean that is soooo totally unfair.
Monday morning: Hand papers and corresponding website print outs to administrator. Start Academic Dishonesty proceedings: Zero on paper, suspension, etc.
Monday afternoon: Several phone calls to parents, meeting with students, meeting with administrators.
Tuesday morning: More meeting with administrators, it seems one of the students when shown her/his paper was confused how s/he wasn’t allowed to have used some one else’s information (yeah, and I just fell off the turnip truck yesterday, too)-was I sure s/he knew the difference between plagiarism and using information?
Tuesday morning: (while supposed to be teaching class) Counselor of one of the “borrowers” tries to explain that s/he deserves some considerations because this has never happened to him/her before. Maybe we can work something out…
Tuesday morning (still): Meeting with Parent and Administrator (while my class is hanging from the rafters and watching The Price is Right on TV) Parent of said student is angry that we are penalizing this student for an honest mistake. S/He just forgot the quotation marks or the citation in their paper. (Yep, and I forgot I was holding up a gun when I took that money from the bank). Can’t I just take a few points off? I am being too harsh. I am supposed to be teaching kids to learn, not suspending them so they cannot. (Yep, then let me go teach my class right now and let me teach your student, and apparently you, a lesson about personal responsibility and character- by the way, for that there needs to be consequences, not entitlement.) Dad the enforcer doesn’t win, he is furious. Who has said no to him lately?
Tuesday late Morning: Dad sends in the principal to talk with me. We talk. The principal and I talk about how I didn’t cheat, the student actually did. We also talk about how I didn’t set the board policy on academic honesty, the School Board actually did.
Tuesday Noon: Mother of said student calls and berates me for being a horrible teacher and, by the way was I fired from the last school that I taught at? Why is this my first year at Edina? Do I have something to prove to her student? It was really only a sentence that s/he forgot to cite. Her other child did this at college and only got a few points off from the professor. Why wasn’t I being more reasonable, more understanding? I had to hang up the phone after the woman couldn’t control the extremely rude and disrespectful things she was yelling at me over the phone.
Tuesday Afternoon: Several more meetings with administrators. I was congratulated for hanging up on said mother.
Wednesday Morning: Meeting with principal again. Re: Must turn in final exam of said student once it is graded. Parents are worried that I will grade meanly now that they have done everything to me besides send a sniper to take me out and he has to have something to prove them wrong. (That’s right. There is no professionalism within teaching. It is about vendettas, favorites, and secret hand shakes.) The parents are worried, of course, that I am as dishonest as… well… their student, and… well, as they are.
Funny. Luckily for them and society at large, I was brought up by a family where truth and responsibility reined supreme. I went to a school where the teachers were professionals and the students were the ones that had something to learn. I went into teaching to make this world a better place, not to get rich, to have a big title, or to be mean to students for the hell of it.
I come to work every day to teach. Teach kids history, teach kids how to read and write, teach kids to analyze, and yes, to teach kids how to tell the truth, to be on time, and not to cheat. I can do that when other people let me: be in the classroom, enforce consequences, and let students learn from both successes and failures.
When students leave my classroom for the last time, (as my seniors did today) I want them to leave knowing how to work hard, how to give of themselves, how to take chances, and how to be honest and real. Not to lie, cheat, and steal just to get where they want to go. It would be great if some parents around here saw it the same way.
So I will end my rant with this: the state legislatures should start by telling parents to get on the stick and start helping teachers and schools to do what they have been doing all along- educating their kids in subjects AND in character.
posted by KLOU | 3:48 PM
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