Do you know what I am thankful for? I’m thankful for the engaged, wise,, articulate and loyal group of commenters Ethics Alarms has. Thank-you. You all make every day an adventure and a revelation. And you make me laugh.
For a vivid example, I awoke this morning to this Comment of the Day from Rob Thompson, who doesn’t weigh in here often—the last time was four years ago—but makes his contributions count. Here are his thoughts on this the likely roots of this horrifying and annoying video and its likely roots, which I apologize for having to post again but the discussion can’t be fully appreciated without it.
This is Robert Thompson’s Comment of the Day on the post, “What Do You Conclude From This Woman’s Head-Exploding Rant?”…and have a wonderful, warm Thanksgiving, everyone.
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Her video typifies what we see every day. Many high school students follow this mentality of “I wasn’t taught this” placing the onus on the educational system. And while this has merit, it isn’t the only problem.
I am the first to admit that there are serious problems with public education, including teaching content needed only to satisfy a test or a credit of some type. This leads to, in Ohio for example, all graduates must have at least an Algebra 2 math credit. How many of our students achieve this is a mystery considering the number of the students that I have that cannot perform basic four-function math, figure simple percentages (10% off for example), work with fractions or decimals. Their science and language arts skills are often even worse.
Our system does not encourage intellectual curiosity. To really learn something, it requires having an interest in the subject. Too few high school students have any interest in doing more than is required to pass a class.
Not many parents actually parent anymore or take much notice of what their children are doing in school, so you end up with rooms filled with free-range kids doing whatever they feel like, which is often watching and/or making tik-tok videos. If you try to enforce some behavior standards, our warm and fuzzy culture places the burden on the staff to make the student feel good about behaving properly, i.e., reward them for showing up on time instead of correcting unacceptable behaviors.
Education should be about providing waypoints of knowledge, leading a person to question, explore, and to fill in the gaps and find answers along the way. Instead, we have a system of day care providers, dribbling out pieces of information to disinterested and unattached “learners.” As long as the public is apathetic and the teachers’ unions have influence, things will remain as they are. Expecting our modern youth culture to recognize the problems and do their part to correct things is probably asking a little too much.
Ethics Alarms 
Yeah, these are outstanding thoughts. I appreciate thinkers like Rob who can collect these ideas – which I believe are truths in today’s culture – and present them to us. The culpability of parents and their lack regard concerning the education of their children is especially troubling. My parents aren’t perfect, but they instilled in us a love of learning, and a love of reading in particular, that has stuck with us for half a century. My parents are avid learners now (at eighty years old) and their three boys have large libraries, brimming with knowledge both realized and potential.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family, Jack! This site, and your work by extension, is a treasure. I count 2019 – the year I re-discovered EthicsAlarms – as a very good year.
And a Happy Thanksgiving to all the readers/responders on this site. I have learned SO much from all of you.
“… the discussion can’t be fully appreciated without it.”
If somehow I come across something as vapid as that video seems to be, I move on without delay. But, then, I’m not a professional ethicist with a daily blog. Despite being prompted, I could not tolerate watching the full video, but I’ll enter the discussion anyway, with a less than full appreciation, and address some of the COTD.
(I’m guessing/assuming that Rob is a high school teacher, a line of work in which I have a lot of experience.)
“Her video typifies what we see every day.” Really? That would happen only if we spent far too much time on social media, perhaps zeroing in on that type of video.
“Our system does not encourage intellectual curiosity.” It is the job of the teacher (and others) to do that regardless of whatever ‘system’ they find themselves in. The challenge is more difficult with students who grow up in homes with no globes, much less two, but the challenge must be accepted and met.
“Not many parents actually parent anymore … .” What does many mean? And, well, did they ever? Doesn’t matter. Again, the job of the teacher is to deal with that challenge. Nothing new there.
” … free-range kids doing whatever they feel like … .” Wow. Who is in charge of that classroom? How about this — on the first day of class, tell the kids to put on their desk only the stuff they need for class; everything else (including cell phones) goes in the back of the room until the end of class. Check the desks. Free range ends at the door to the classroom.
“Expecting our modern youth culture to recognize the problems and do their part to correct things is probably asking a little too much.” Not sure what is meant here by ‘youth culture’, but, culture doesn’t correct anything. People do. When it comes to education, it is well nigh time to quit passing the blame around to parents, unions, the system, the culture, systemic racism, administrators, or any of the other convenient excuses. The onus is, and must be, on the teacher in the classroom.
I’m going to hold back until I see some other reactions, but the focus of my rebuttal would be culture.
Great comment, HJ.
You make some great points. Let me expand a little.
“Her video typifies what we see every day.” I/we see students, and some adults, who have phone addictions. We’ll have kids spending every spare moment, that includes actual instructional time, on social media. We (the district) are just now implementing policies to curb this. Some of us in the classrooms have been addressing it for years, but it is a real concern.
“Our system does not encourage intellectual curiosity.” I used “system” on purpose. Are there teachers who promote this? Of course. I’m known for not providing answers because I want my students to find out things using the tools and resources they have available to them. But the system, at least from what we see, does not really encourage this.
“Not many parents actually parent anymore … .” In 30 years there has been a definite shift in parenting duties. Just as police are now expected to be social workers, educators are expected to fill any and every roll in a child’s life, and it’s just not possible with every kid.
” … free-range kids doing whatever they feel like … .” Yes, there are lousy teachers who don’t have classroom management but this relates to the previous point. Parents who do not instill work ethic, morals, civility, an appreciation for learning, empathy, etc. create kids who are unmanageable. The same parents then defend their kid’s behavior when it’s called into question. And unfortunately, current management styles don’t always support the teacher. Some people will take the easy path and not create more headaches for themselves and just let the kid to whatever.
“The onus is, and must be, on the teacher in the classroom.” I’m guessing you have no experience in this?
Are there great teachers making differences in children’s lives? Of course, everywhere and every day. Are there unprofessional teachers unduly influencing students and bringing their personal biases and beliefs into the classroom? Yes, unfortunately, and the examples are getting worse and more common. I believe this is because culturally, the progressive movement is endorsing and encouraging this. Check out the unions, who claim to be about supporting teachers and students. Look at NEA and AFT and see what their real agendas are and ask yourself – are they ahead or behind the culture curve?
I appreciate the interaction, Rob, and let me just reply a bit.
“We’ll have kids spending every spare moment, that includes actual instructional time, on social media.” I retired from teaching (high school students, 20 years, a 2nd career) about 14 years ago, so, certainly some things have changed. But, just how is it kids can be on social media during instructional time? Is it the misuse of tablets intended as instructional aids, or are they just allowed to have their phones out during class time?
“But the system … does not really encourage this [intellectual curiosity]”. Well, if you are encouraging it, and if others are, then the system (whatever that is) doesn’t matter so much for this issue. If the ‘system’ is the sum total of everything that goes into education within a district, then, certainly some parts of that system do encourage intellectual curiosity.
“And unfortunately, current management styles don’t always support the teacher.” This one I understand. One of my examples: We were told to enforce the dress code. A student was far outside what was allowed, and she refused to make the correction she could have made right then and there. I wrote a referral and sent her to see her principal. When I followed up after the class ended, I found that she had torn up the referral and scattered the pieces in the hallway. A custodian was doing clean up. I went to the principal and said that the student (who was still in the office) should be required to do the cleanup. The principal refused, saying he did not want to escalate the situation.
“’The onus is, and must be, on the teacher in the classroom.’ I’m guessing you have no experience in this?” Well, just 20 years, as I mentioned above. I’m not counting my time as a student, although I certainly had opinions then on what teachers should be doing.
Thanks for adding some context. It sounds like you know exactly how things can be.
Yes, things have changed some in the last 14 years or so, at least around here. It’s not just the change of everyone having a phone, it’s the shift of taking nearly all the responsibility of the student (and parents) and placing it on teachers and other staff. For example:
Attendance – for students who are habitually tardy or absent, we’re supposed to figure out what’s going on and try to correct it. We’re told “If you’re providing meaningful education, they’ll want to show up on time.” There is some truth to that but there are also kids who just want to sleep late and show up whenever they feel like. In Ohio, you can’t penalize anyone for not showing up to school anymore. On too many occasions I’ve had parents say “I can’t get him/her out of bed.” or similar.
The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many (to paraphrase Spock) regarding IEPs. I have a family member who teaches Kindergarten. She has kids that are physically abusive to her and other students, who are nearly uncontrollable, and disrupt the class constantly. She gets no support, basically told to deal with it because of their IEPs.
There’s a lot wrong with public education but we’re downstream of the effects of worsening trends regarding the home and family.
Well said.
I would add that these children are created not just by inattentive parents but also be ill prepared, uninspiring, mediocre teachers in their early years. In my opinion, most poor teachers are doing everything they can to get out of the classroom and into supervisory administrative roles at the board office. The staff I speak of could not teach their way out of a wet paper bag and upon gaining a supervisory position they glom onto every fad to justify their existence. They undermine the effective teachers by forcing them to adopt untested ideas that some other teacher developed as part of a post graduate program. As a result there is no way to assess the pedagogy for teaching effectiveness or the supervisors value. This leads to students only learning what will be on the test.
It used to be thought that the brighter kids in the class will raise the academic success of the rest of the class but just the opposite results. This is the argument against providing school vouchers. It stems from the belief that all the good students will aggregate in private schools and public school teacher will be left with the dregs.
The same is true among teachers. The worst teachers wind up causing the effective teachers to become tired of fighting the supervisor and only teach to the test.
This women apparently never found her way to the library. The degree of ignorance is indeed astounding. But then it seems pandemic. I bet she can recite the growing gender identities.