Contributors
J.F. Kelly, Jr. - Contributor

J.F. Kelly, Jr. is a retired Navy Captain and bank executive who writes on current events and military subjects. He is a resident of Coronado, California. [go to Kelly index]

Chaos in the Classrooms
Political correctness and the disintegration of education...
[J. F. Kelly, Jr.] 6/30/04

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal reminded me of how thankful I was over having alternatives to resuming a public school teaching career after retiring from the Navy. No disrespect is intended toward that noble calling. I readily admit to lacking the patience to deal with the disciplinary problems that occupied the bulk of a teacher’s time during my experience in an inner city school. But that was long ago and things have surely gotten better. Well, maybe not.

The article, written by Thaddeus Herrick, reported that a principal in El Paso, Texas met a challenge to her students by eating two night crawlers in the school cafeteria in recognition of their performance in a reading contest. Not to be outdone, the Assistant Principal got into the spirit by plucking two more large specimens from a jar and consuming them in front of the squealing kids, even going so far as to describe the sensations he experienced, mostly nausea I would expect.

I’ve used night crawlers for bait and I’m surprised that even fish find them appetizing. The stunt, I’m sure, will add much-needed appeal to the reputation of regular school cafeteria food. Meanwhile, in Dallas, another principal let his students cut his hair with dog clippers as a reward for improved test scores. Only in Texas, you might think. But in California, another principal kissed a pot-bellied pig and in Virginia, a male principal dressed in a pink tutu and tiara, all to commemorate student achievements of some sort.

Such antics may be excused by some with the comment, “do whatever it takes to motivate the kids” but whatever it takes really should stop well short of allowing authority figures and role models in the schools to behave like morons. It’s probably expecting too much to hope that superior academic achievement would constitute its own reward but what’s wrong with rewarding achievement by something with educational value, like say, a field trip or a visit to a circus where the clowns are at least professional.

It’s hard to make the case today that public schools, with exceptions, of course, are doing a good job, particularly in the inner cities. In spite of record amounts of funding, decreased class size, teaching assistants, parent volunteers and a half century of progressive education reforms, today’s public school product is clearly inferior, academically, to that of fifty years ago, giving the lie to that foolish, oft-repeated platitude that “today’s kids are smarter than ever”.

Too many products of public elementary schools today are unprepared to do college preparatory work in high school and too many high school graduates are unable to handle college courses without multiple remedial classes. Most are unable to complete an undergraduate degree in the four years that used to be the norm.

Here’s a radical observation. Throwing money at public school problems often doesn’t seem to improve much except the morale of teachers, administrators and their unions. Neither, apparently, does reducing class size beyond some point. Neither do platoons of teacher aides or even new furniture and equipment.

What has gone wrong in the schools? Why is student achievement steadily declining in most of the big city school systems in spite of these things? Perhaps it’s because the teaching staff is too preoccupied in trying to maintain disciple. Perhaps there are too many situations where the inmates are running the asylum, as it were. My own suspicion is that we started to lose control back in the “progressive” fifties when we first unscrewed the desks and chairs from the floors.

Psychologist John Rosemond of Affirmative Parenting says that the most important variable in the classroom is not class size, or funding per pupil, or teacher credentials. It is pupil behavior. The better the behavior, the more effectively and efficiently the teacher can teach. I wholeheartedly agree. I fondly recall the nuns and lay teacher in the parochial grade school I attended. A single teacher, paid far less than her public school colleagues, taught her class every subject. No changing rooms and teachers. No roaming the halls between periods. No periods, in fact; just a break for recess. No social promotions. There was very little discussion of things like self- esteem, but lots of math, science and composition. Troublemakers who disrupted class were dealt with promptly and it almost always involved the participation of a parent or guardian who would be called at work, if necessary.

Those days, of course, are long past. Today’s permissive culture, restraints on authority and political correctness have reduced the curriculum to Pablum and teachers to the status of babysitters. It isn’t all the fault of the schools. Parents have failed their kids on a massive scale. Unless kids are socialized at home to value education and to respect adults and authority, a teacher’s job, challenging under the best of conditions, is virtually hopeless. Unless the parents themselves value reading, learning and intelligent conversation more than television, sports and other leisure activity, how can we expect scholarship from their kids?

Ask yourself why the children of Asian families are, as a group, outperforming the rest of us academically, white, black or brown? Are they just inherently smarter as a race? Of course not. Could it, then, have anything to do with a culture that values learning and academic achievement, venerates parents and elders and respects authority, including teachers? Unfortunately, it’s politically incorrect to ask that question out loud. CRO

copyright 2004 J. F. Kelly, Jr.

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