HOW DO WE GET THE GENIE BACK INTO THE BOTTLE?

This message is coming to you from a middle school teacher who is very concerned about the deteriorating condition of public education in this country. As we continue to fall behind in the standings of other civilized countries of the world, in terms of educating our youth, it would seem that the reasons are glaringly visible. Parents of students no longer view a solid education as the path to a better life and they have stopped considering education a privilege and see it now as a birth right. The presidential program “NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND” has created an atmosphere that all children, no matter how disruptive, have a right to remain in the classroom. Principals and teachers alike have allowed discipline to slip from their grasp for fear that they might offend or upset the powers that be and thus cause themselves to come under scrutiny for their inability to comply with the law of the land.
I recently wrote a lengthy letter to the Obama transition team detailing these problems as I see them and I requested that he revisit the current legislation that has become a road block to achievement. There are a multitude of children in the public system only because their parents cannot afford a private education for them. Many of these students have a burning desire to do well and excel in school but are handicapped by those disruptive students whose only goal in life is to be seen as a bad example. They complicate matters by causing young, first term, teachers to rethink whether the career field they have chosen was such a good idea. We are losing these teachers at an alarming rate, so what is to become of the system when the experienced teachers chose retirement. The chasm will by that time be one that we cannot bridge and the downward spiral into mediocrity will continue.
In my letter to Mr. Obama’s advisors I suggested that we bring back or put greater emphasis on a trade school education for students that continue to flaunt the school systems inability to control them. This approach might give some of them a dose of reality that may well bring them into line. If this fails to impress upon them the value of education and they continue to act like the thugs they so idolize then let them try to make a living without the benefit of any education.
It’s time we recaptured our role as educators instead of babysitters.