Yesterday I went to an allergist to figure out if I’m actually allergic to the tetanus shot. He decided I was not allergic; I had an adverse reaction. He then full-on admitted that from my perspective it probably didn’t matter whether I was allergic or adversely reacting…I was paranoid about having another shot. And then he told me that he’d never heard of anyone having a reaction like mine (my lymph nodes swelled up like balloons and I ran a high fever). So he and his colleague put their heads together and came up with a plan for me.
The most interesting part of this doctor visit was not that he actually listened to my freakish issues and came up with a totally reasonable plan, but that he and his kids had just returned from Nicaragua, where he had been on a medical mission, treating people who make less than 50 cents a day and may have never seen a doctor in their lives, and he told me he thought all kids should have to go live somewhere extremely rural and poor during the teen years…I have long thought that there should be some sort of national education plan that requires middle-school kids to spend a year abroad, so they get a better concept of reality. I have a friend who thinks many middle-school kids aren’t capable of anything but ditch-digging for most of puberty. I’m not THAT radical, but I do think having a world mindset would be helpful, having a bigger experience than the space between their home and the school. The doctor told me that the elementary kids go to school in the morning (and then probably work the fields illegally in the afternoon), and the high-school kids work the fields in the morning and then go to school in the afternoon. They’re not playing video games. They’re not watching 6 hours of television. They’re not coming up with all these excuses to not finish their homework. They’re not hanging out at the mall with their friends…they may WISH they were doing all of those things, but those aren’t choices they have. They may still not like school, but at least they have a better idea of what the alternatives might be to doing well in school. I’m not sure when my students will get that.
No, that’s not Nicaragua and they’re not picking coffee, but they are kids.
I think that while Arne Duncan is trying to figure out ways to make me accountable for the test scores of kids who were in my class three years ago, he should be figuring out an exchange program that will persuade even kids from absolutely crappy family situations (that I can’t fix) that they have it better than many, and they should appreciate the opportunities they have and take advantage of them, even if it is only as a way to escape what they have now. I’m a white woman who did well in school. We weren’t rich growing up, but we weren’t poor either. I don’t blame my students for not listening to me when I tell them this is a way out, a chance to do better, a way to have choices. Why should they listen to me? What do I know? The hardest part of my job is getting the kids to care about their own grades, their own learning process, their own futures. They often don’t believe they have futures, or if they do, they think they will be a future Tony Hawk or Junior Seau or a rock star or an NFL football player. They think magic will happen and they won’t have to do any work to get paid. I wonder sometimes what their parents tell them…whether they are trying to protect them from their job situation or whether they are telling them that myth that they are special and can do whatever they want with their lives.
Hell, they CAN do whatever they want…they just need to start working their butts off now.
I know. My doctor is a bigger idealist than I am in many ways (ask him about the economy and its connection to high-school students owning cell phones), but when I’ve been spending time in my head REFLECTING (all teachers have to reflect all the time on whether kids learned and how we could encourage them to learn more better) on how to reach the kids who seemed unreachable, sometimes I come up with ideas that just aren’t going to happen in the real world.
I do have fabric stuff to post about, but it seems so unrelated to this that it needs its own space.
July 1, 2009 at 11:29 am |
I think it all starts with the parents. My mom and dad never, for one second, allowed us to think that having an eduction was negotiable. We were told from the very beginning that you do this to make a good life for yourself and college is necessary. It was always present in the forefront of my mind and I’m grateful for it.
July 1, 2009 at 3:21 pm |
All clueful people agree with that. I think Kathy’s trying to imagine what a society can do given the likelihood that so many parents will continue to fail their children. Politicians calling for teacher accountability is much worse than beside the point.
July 1, 2009 at 4:48 pm |
I couldn’t agree more, I learned more about life in my year in Africa in my early twenties than all of college put together. I think every American should have to live for a year in a third world country, it certainly makes you appreciate what we have here. And, conversely, living overseas also teaches that the world does not revolve around what the USA wants or thinks.
July 1, 2009 at 6:48 pm |
Excellent and thoughtful post. I think this idea has a great deal of merit. An introduction to the “real world”, i.e. the world most human beings live in.
Sorry about the tetanus issue, BTW.