SCHOOLHOUSE, FUNHOUSE, MADHOUSE

Some schools more closely resemble funhouses, or madhouses, than schoolhouses. Supplies are scarce, texts are tattered, buildings are are often still polluted with asbestos, fountains might spew leaded drinking water, bullies rule the hallways, teachers are at continual risk of assault, principals take the side of the kids in any conflict with teachers; and a whole bunch of youngsters who should be in school, aren't. For instance, the public schools in Philadelphia have a district-wide daily absentee rate of 33%. Yep, one third of them are missing on any given day. Many who do show up are an hour or more late. And some of them can be seen loitering just outside the school — a few openly smoking joints.

It is plainly nuts to hold teachers accountable for failing to teach kids who aren't there. Nevertheless, it happens every time high stakes standardized tests are given. Plus many kids who are physically present, are emotionally and/or intellectually absent. Instead of focusing on learning, they focus on where their next meal is coming from, if they will end up homeless, if their putative father is in prison again, if Mom will be "entertaining" still another guy tonight, if she will get dangerously high, if she will pass out drunk in her own puke, or will end up beaten half to death by an abusive "boyfriend." 

Other kids are so petrified of being assaulted, even killed, by a gang, they can't think straight — much less study. Even more are too depressed and/or angry  to give the slightest damn about school. Still others make far too much money standing sentinel for drug dealers, or peddling drugs themselves, to regard school as anything other than a place to go to raise disruptive hell or take refuge from bad weather. Are we surprised, then, that sixty five percent of these Philadelphia "students" fail to achieve proficiency on the Commonwealth's high stakes tests? Let's hope we're not.

Of course educators are typically blamed when kids score this badly. Opportunistic politicians even demand that teachers stop leaving kids behind? In the Bush II era, federal politicians even passed a law they hypocritically titled "No Child Left Behind." This is where the funhouse kicks in.  Demanding that teachers leave no child behind is as realistic as demanding that physicians leave no patient unwell.

In the funhouse/madhouse schools of this "other America," things are so chaotic that learning and teaching always teeter on the edge of impossible. And this is especially true when administrators cravenly fail to back teachers in matters of order and discipline. That's when schools really degenerate into truly scary places. Especially for any small, sensitive, smart youngster who really wants to learn. In fact, very few, no matter how smart or determined, can teach, or learn, in the midst of the chaos that then ensues. Yet school "management" typically still fosters the pretense that teaching and learning are taking place. Worse, teachers are expected, even coerced, to join the charade. Should they resist and demand the truth, the administration will almost certainly decide they are at fault.

Engulfed in chaos, kids who want to learn, are demoralized, disheartened and eventually give up. But a surprising number of teachers continue to put up with the chaos and try to teach. Why? Some are close to retirement. Others are so demoralized they've assumed the prone position. A few have bought the teacher "accountability" nonsense and blame themselves. Then there are all those divorced women who desperately need the income. There are a lot of reasons why these folks tolerate the intolerable. But holding their feet to the fire while simultaneously ignoring anything and everything that makes teaching impossible, is damnable.   

It's not as if these impediments to learning are invisible. Most of the impediments that make these schools madhouses could not be more obvious. Yet few, if any allowances are made for the teachers. Instead our politicians piously and pusillanimously demand that teachers produce positive results. Remember the "Every Student Succeeds Act?" That's the preposterous nonsense that followed the equally farcical "No Child Left Behind Act." Such nonsensical legislation blithely ignores the most elemental reality. 

Educators should never be held accountable for things beyond their control.  As my life-hardened Granny used to put it, "Ya can't pick boogers with gloves on." There is no surer way to demoralize and embitter a caring teacher than to expect them to pick boogers in the mittens circumstances require them to wear. Indeed, there is no better way to quickly drive the best and the brightest completely out of teaching. And that is precisely what is happening.

Where does this leave us? With an acute shortage of qualified teachers, that's where. Instead, we fill the ranks with whatever cannon fodder can be dredged up. And many of them will also be gone in no time. This is no way to prepare America for tomorrow. But our political "leaders" are so busy posturing, lying, quarreling, playing "gotcha' and biting each other in the ass, that this looks like be the best we can do. If so, shame on us!