REAL ART RERUN
FOUR OLD ONES ABOUT HOW I HATED TEACHING

BACK TO SCHOOL
Back to Hell

This Real Art Rerun was first posted on August 11, 2003.

I start four days of mind-numbing in-service work tomorrow at the high school where I teach. First, there will be what amounts to a district wide three hour pep rally for our decidedly authoritarian brand of "education," complete with cheering and clapping, cheap business seminar styled videos scored with crappy inspirational pop music of teachers in the act of indoctrinating children, displays of numbers and statistics that show us how "accountable" we have been, and lots of other crap, including a Christian prayer that always makes me nervous and uncomfortable.

Hooray.

Later, I will try to stay awake during meetings, meetings, meetings--I will probably be the only one who realizes how futile it all is. Thank god, this is my last year. The mayhem of students next week will be a relief compared to the "professional" side of the business of "education."

I'm so sick of this silly dance. I'm soooooooo burned out...

Anyway, expect my furious pace of summer blogging to slow down somewhat for a while. I'm going to try to post everyday, but my commentary may not be as insightful or lengthy as it has been for the last couple of months. Or maybe it will. I guess I'm just saying that I'm going to be more busy than I have been, so here's a disclaimer.

Maybe I'll try to write more tales from the trenches of the indoctrinational system that we call "school:" something like "A LEFTIST SUBVERSIVELY SURVIVES CONTEMPORARY CONCENTRATION CAMPS" or some such....

Sigh...

Time for bed. It's a school night.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


SURVIVING THE RE-EDUCATION CAMPS

This Real Art Rerun was first posted on August 12, 2003.

I've gotta hand it to my school district: for the first time in five years, we did not open the semi-annual district wide faculty meeting with a Christian prayer. Instead, we had a "moment of silence," with which I can deal, I guess. Everything else today went just about as I predicted minus the "accountablility" statistics--I guess I should count myself lucky on that score. I did get the usual verification of what public schools are actually about: there were many stern advisements about obeying the bureaucratic routine and enforcing strong discipline on students--as always, school is about authority and obedience.

One thing did unnerve me: there was discussion of how to implement the new Texas pledge law. Come to find out, in addition to having to compel students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and have a (Christian inspired) "moment of silence" on a daily basis, we must also compel students to recite a pledge to the Texas flag. My job becomes ever more creepy. I didn't even know there was a pledge to the Texas flag. It's not that I have a huge problem with saying the pledge, myself, it's just that it's pretty hardcore to insist that all students must say it; it strikes me as anti-freedom and hypocritical. After all, the state law was adopted amid all the pro-war hysteria back in April and it reeks of McCarthyism. It's more like pledging "allegiance to the war" as Jello Biafra has observed.

I just keep saying to myself, "this is my last year; this is my last year."

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


SURVIVING THE RE-EDUCATION CAMPS II

This Real Art Rerun was first posted on August 17, 2003.

Because school is not really about learning, ongoing teacher training, like the school system itself, often presents wild absurdities: this was my experience last Wednesday. Secondary teachers in my district spent the day in seminars that supposedly are designed to make us better teachers. My content area, fine arts (theater to be more precise), was grouped with two other content areas, public speaking and foreign language, that, fortunately, are not subject to George W. Bush’s “accountability” oriented standardized tests. The entire public school system in Texas is geared now toward this “accountability.” Teachers working in the tested content areas get some very specific and somewhat useful in-service training. Generally, teachers in the untested areas do not get such training. In short, after five years of teaching, it is now clear to me that my district simply does not know what to do with us on these state mandated in-service days.

Perhaps that’s why I again had to endure a folksy motivational speaker who both bored me and insulted my intelligence last year. She gave us the EXACT same presentation as before, the same PowerPoint show, the same handouts, and the same stupid inspirational stories. This lasted from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. minus an hour for lunch. It really sucked.

If I had more belief in the educational system, I would call this a waste of tax dollars, but because the system is so devoted to mindless routine, I would assert that everything’s working like it’s supposed to. The only glitch here is that the charade is usually not so obvious. That is to say, content, for both students and teachers, is largely irrelevant; school seeks to further a national agenda focused on the giving and receiving of orders. Sitting quietly and listening to (or ignoring) a droning voice for hours on end is the preferred indoctrinational exercise—punishing teachers in the same way that they punish their students seems to legitimize the whole thing. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose. I guess. Most of the time, however, these seminars have just enough valuable content so as to give the appearance of being educational; generally, there is about an hour’s worth of useful information for every five or six hours’ worth of seminar. Last Wednesday’s repeater, with NO new useful information, is one of those rare instances when the Emperor’s bare bottom is visible for all to see.

Strangely, most of my fellow teachers were very forgiving of the presumed foul up. Many of them didn’t have a problem with it at all, and loved the whole thing, even though it was a complete repetition of last year’s in-service day—I’ll never understand why people don’t see motivational speakers for the hucksters they are.

Sigh.

The human capacity for self-delusion is truly amazing.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


SURVIVING THE RE-EDUCATION CAMPS III

This Real Art Rerun was first posted on August 24, 2003.

You may recall that I mentioned in an earlier post how I was subjected to a motivational speaker for hours on end about a week and a half ago during a teacher in-service seminar. I really despise motivational speakers. Their typical “you can do it” message ideologically tends to take the individual out of all social contexts. They add rhetorical support to the notion that if you don’t succeed, it’s your fault. Don’t get me wrong here; often, individual failure is, in fact, due to lack of individual effort. More often, however, individual failure and success are the result of social forces that are not so easy to see: despite the so-called “American Dream,” the vast majority of people rarely move out of their economic class—if you’re born poor, you probably die poor. I agree with the concept of “personal responsibility” and all that, but, at this point in American history, neo-liberal demagoguery has taken the concept to a wild and harmful extreme. Motivational speakers are, ultimately, apologists for “personal responsibility” mania. The speaker who I endured was no different.

Her topic was “character.” She related her theme to education with this simple thesis: teach students to value character and they will be motivated to work harder. She said, “Character is the root of success…and achievement is the fruit of character.” Whatever. Like most of her peers, she enjoyed reducing the complexities of what is for many Americans a harsh existence in our take-no-prisoners, money-first society to simple slogans. Even though her presentation consisted mostly of inspiring stories about morals and values delivered in a fundamentalist Christian oratorical style, her rhetoric was steeped in pro-capitalist ideology, propaganda disguised as pedagogy.

She told us that the “greatness of American business is trust and honesty.” She related character emphasis in education to business profits. Hello? Isn’t there some irony here? Afraid not. She made a joke about Enron at one point, but never even came close to discussing the 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the room: America’s devotion to greed and how that devotion erodes all other values. There was no discussion about how her message might be problematic.

Indeed, “character,” as a concept, has contributed to the general confusion surrounding quite a few of our national messes. The profit-at-all-costs imperative is the social context wherein failure of “character” has resulted in the ongoing wave of corporate and accounting scandals still rocking the US economy: “character” cannot be considered without delving into some truths that are uncomfortable to American capitalism; the “few bad apples” approach just doesn’t cut it. Perhaps worse, the corporate news media has replaced political analysis with “character” analysis. The Iraq war, based on blatant nationalistic lies (believed by all “good” Americans), and the needless Clinton impeachment are but the two biggest examples of newsrooms’ obsession with “character” to the exclusion of any real political content.

Again, I’m all for individual virtue, character, and responsibility. However, without considering social context, “character” becomes simply dogma that ultimately supports the powerful and justifies their position. Of course, that’s one of the main functions of public school, so why am I complaining?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$