Another Education Rant

In a guest blog for Public Brewery I hinted at the difficulties of teaching kids about Mark Felt (AKA Deep Throat). I think the whole Watergate story might capture the imagination of students the way it has captured my own. I mean the cloak and dagger side of Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation is a true American thriller. But dang if they didn’t name their primary source after porn flick making it tough to talk about in Middle American classrooms. To tell a kid to research it is just asking for a court appearance. “No your honor I did not tell my students to look up porn on school computers or at home.” This leads to the dead horse that I have beaten here and here.

Teachers who want to teach…I mean really teach kids about our world are hamstrung by an educational structure that discourages the “real” for a pre programmed “matrix” of reality we are supposed to build for students to live and “discover” in. No wonder kids hate school and don’t understand why they are there. Students can’t see over the wall to see the figures creating the shadows on the wall, hell they don’t even know the wall exists. Look at our national drop out rates according to NCES for secondary education, for that matter look at the washout rate among young public school teeachers (this one I have seen first hand). One way to keep teachers coming back and keep kids in school aside from paying a professional wage is LET US TEACH! When teachers are truly excited and connected to their work so are the kids. In order to be excited we need to not have to look over our shoulders every time we bring up a topic that may not seem at first glance to fit into the matrix, even when that topic is Deep Throat.

And with that I will close this chapter of an ongoing rant that will no doubt continue soon enough.