Waiting For Superman

Waiting for Superman is a recent docu-movie  that every American needs to watch.

Follow this link to  learn more about the film:   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1566648/


I would have been a good teacher. I always wanted to be a teacher but I decided against it after my second year in college after realizing that teaching was corrupted by the system. When I graduated from High School I was pretty sure I could do better than some of the ones I had most recently experienced and yet by the second year of taking education courses in college I realized the system was the problem and I knew I was not cut out to follow the rules they had laid out.

I had some really great teachers, Vivian Phelps and Alta Abrams were most influential when I was young and attended a one room school house in Kenya. Even more important in my education were the teachers at Delamare Boys secondary school in Nairobi. It was a British school with only boys... that means no girls. Uniforms and very strict enforcement of the rules. I loved it and I had a great education there. Teachers like Mr. French who taught History, Mrs. Sofat, a pretty Indian lady that always wore a sari taught English and  sexy Miss. Pinto that taught art, (she was hot). The PE coach was Mr. Velzine who also was an Olympic coach for the Kenyan running teams. Why do you suppose I remember their names? It is because they were important in my success. Not a single one of them was easy but rather they made us work hard and they made us better. They were tough. And corporal punishment was administered freely.

In 1971 I attended Anderson High School in Anderson Indiana for my senior year. Except for auto shop it was basically a useless waste of my time. I was in an economics class one afternoon with Mr. Denny and he was sound asleep snoring loudly. Everyone in the class was goofing off and laughing but I was so mad I went to the office and asked to meet with the principal. I was shown to the office of  Mr. Chadbourne, the VP and he explained "Tenure" to me. I was so disgusted I asked my dad about it later ( he was a former teacher) and he assured me that what I had been told was true but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Simply amazing, you could not be fired for being inept!

Yet I still wanted to teach and I still think I would have been good at it. I sort of had my chance while I was a Deputy Sheriff and was a DARE instructor and an SRO. In fact after five years of having been at Conifer High School and battling with the principal most of the time he finally told me that he really thought I should go into education.....he said I would be a good teacher. Yes!

However, I had learned during my ten years of working in the schools that the education system in America is broken.  I was once asked to observe a calss by a very popular junior high teacher that had one class from hell. She simply wanted someone to know what she faced every day and be a witness in case one day one of her students killed her. She bravely faced that class every day but feared that someday it could go badly. I advised her afterwards that I was deeply concerned that the administration would allow that situation to exist at all. I discovered that she was far from alone in that kind of experience. Never would that enviornment have been tolerated at Delamare. 

The very same system that protects a lazy bum of a teacher from being fired also allows a very good and dedicated teacher to be fearful of personal harm from her class. That's just plain stupid, but as Ron White says, "You Can't Fix Stupid ".   If I was king for a day I would abolish the NEA and the Department of Education. I would privatize all schools and let them work to make a profit instead of being a sink hole of despair with no bottom.

Now let me be clear, I was priveleged to work with a whole bunch of really great teachers in the time I spent in the schools. Most of them were very qualified and very dedicated to their craft. I saw year after year of their students leave their classes better human beings than when they arrived. I also worked with a few tremendous principals that made their schools great learning environments. The thing is they performed wonderfully inspite of the system that resists change. Nearly every one of those miracle workers shared frustrations with me about what they thought could make education better. I never ran into a teacher that went into the profession so they could have the summer off and an easy job.  But at the same time they never planned on being a social worker and a policeman and a parent to the students.

The movie "Waiting for Superman" is excellent. It is long over due and is the most important expose on the failure of our public school system in a long time. I urge you to watch it. The facts are simple and plain for all to see. This illustrates once again that our public schools are no longer doing the job. There are solutions but are we ever going to be ready to implement them. Charter schools and vouchers are a good start but the most important thing we could do would be to attach the funds to the student. Start making the schools compete for the students and the money. As good schools began to draw good families the rest would change the way they do business.

In this movie listen to Bill Gates..... he does know what he is talking about.



Tim