THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9407290269
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
To hear some people talk, teachers as a lot are money-grubbing scum bags who share an agenda to undermine all that is good about America:
They work as few hours hours as possible, doing heaven knows what, for outlandish salaries. They indoctrinate their charges with all kinds of subversive messages, so polluting their minds that it's no wonder that they can't master the three R's. As long as the kids feel good about themselves, though, no problem.
What planet do these critics live on? Teacher bashing, it seems to me, is right up there these days with liberal bashing and Christian bashing.
These derisive elements have something else in common: just as liberal bashers and Christian bashers know only that a liberal or a Christian is someone whose ideas clash with theirs, teacher bashers know nothing of what goes on in the nation's schools.
Many haven't stepped foot in a school for decades, yet they have a litany of horror stories that they're convinced should drive us to snatch our kids from the denizens of iniquity that masquerade as educational institutions.
They're satisfied to take the word of Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, ``Christian'' media personalities preaching Henny-Penny sermons and publications so far to the right of reality that reasonable people would just toss them.
That's not to say there aren't bad apples among America's teaching corps. Some abuse their trust, some don't do their job and some may even have a private agenda that clashes with the public good - although I've never witnessed it, either in my educational experience or my children's.
Instead, I've encountered teachers who care beyond their requirements. I'd be willing to match, teacher for teacher, that kind of influence against any examples of miscreants produced by teacher bashers.
Let me make clear that I'm not an objective observer. My wife teaches fourth grade, my son graduated from Suffolk public schools and my daughter still attends one. I grew up practically idolizing teachers and, before the journalism bug bit, prepared in college to be a teacher.
If teachers were the vipers the bashers say, surely I'd have encountered scores of them by now and have seen in my children all the anti-social, anti-family, anti-everything-good behavior they're supposedly advancing. Although not entirely, it's been overwhelmingly teachers with an abiding interest in my children's academic success and their maturity as individuals.
And that brings us to the point that seems to stir the agitation of bashers to boiling: schools' emphasis on making kids feel good about themselves. As long as the children feel good, they say, nothing else is required. Poppycock!
Don't they understand the relationship between self-esteem and accomplishment? Don't they know that one begets the other: that raised self-esteem for a kid whose life situation is overwhelmingly depressing may boost academic achievement, and vice versa?
My guess is that they would - if they would. Rather, they've seized this one element of the educational process as if it were the sum total of contemporary learning, so emphasized that all teachers do all day long is walk around and ask, ``How do you feel about yourself today?'', all the while ignoring English, history and mathematics.
And that, we're to believe, is a nut-shell explanation of why American schools are failing. That's nutty, and anyone willing to go beyond the vitriol of those who regard public schools as America's arch enemies know it.
Much of the problem lies in the years before the children enter school. They're unprepared on every level, some exposed to things that would twist anyone's mind, yet it's teachers' fault that they don't become academic achievers and model citizens. Right! by CNB