“Some people” – OK, a few at least, may have noticed that in the last three weeks I’ve not provided the Herald with a Saturday column. Now before anyone gets the impression that I’m about to go off on some ego trip about how “important” my point of view is to the public, let’s fire hose this flaming stupidity for what it says about people in general.
First of all, our paper’s Editor, although thinking that the paper ought to appeal to all segments of political belief in Prince Albert, EVEN the notorious NDP (although I prefer to be called a “progressive) should be represented in the Op-Ed section, is also aware that my contribution is often late in its arrival, more often than not needs to be trimmed down from its occasionally Master’s thesis length, and on the “rare” occasion tries to tie way too many facts that are actually relevant to the point I’m trying to make. That means the average reader isn’t going to get the point anyway.
In other words, he’s just doing his job…
Now, I’ve been writing news articles and opinions since I was 14, so I know I’ll never be “perfect” at getting my point across; however, unlike our past ancient (I’m in my eighty’s) and sullen has-beens who once thought that their opinions really mattered, I’ve had the luxury of being a teacher for over 30 years, so I have little trouble in listening to students discuss issues that their parents won’t take the time to listen to what they have to say.
Parents like this disgust me, not to mention political parties that won’t let teenagers formulate political resolutions until they’re at least 18 and can “vote” the way their parents currently do. From my perspective as a teacher, part of the learning process’s many ways in which it fails to “educate” is that while children first entering school intuitively understand that they are there to learn something they have yet to understand, by the time the kids reach Grade 9, they believe that they already know everything to know in order to survive (unless the parents are doing their part in reinforcing the lessons learned on any given day at school). This is why the drop-out rate from Grades 8 through 11 are at the moment so critically obscene.
Teachers should instinctively be capable of identifying parents who neglect the reinforcement mandate that is their role in order for the lessons of the day be remembered throughout life. As a mathematics teacher, a subject that actually does relate to every item in which the school staff is providing instruction, “they” (as in “me”) “have it easy”; the first time a parent tells me that “they had a hard time with math in school, too…”, I immediately know that the parent is providing an enabling tool that the child can later hide behind in attempting to rationalize that weakness.
That’s not to say that mathematics teachers “have it easy” in being the bearers of bad tidings; virtually any Language instructor who listens to a parent rationalizing that their child has “issues” in forming an idea and describing its process should be asked as to whether the parent allows the child the occasional opportunity to add their opinion to the conversations going on at the dinner table. Or, do they not eat together on occasion. Or, does one parent have that “STFU” approach to anyone sitting at the table – including his/her partner that conflicts with their embedded for life take on things.
Other learning weaknesses prevail as a result of the too heavy influence of religion or fact-based understanding, for example, in Biology, where you’ll hear that “I can’t take the subject; my parents think Darwinian theories are anti-Christ…”, or in History, where “It’s so BORING; all the teacher wants me to remember is a bunch of stupid dates and place where someone got killed, and we don’t even know ‘why’ that event even happened…” – an opinion I once endorsed before going to university and took a PoliSci class that explained why that war or that historical “event” happened in the first place.
As for the much neglected and serious need for a school to have a PhysEd specialist on staff, if your kids are still playing Dodgeball in Grade 7, “instructed” by a teacher not even wearing running shoes, your school board’s budget is either in seriously rough shape, OR the individual who should be exercising the children while teaching them how to look after themselves “healthfully” is currently the Public Relations Representative now residing in what was once called the Principal’s Office. That’s the SAME individual who is always threatening to “write you up” whenever you bring the learning concerns you have with regard to a student because they believe that “it’s your job” as a teacher to empathize with the parental concerns, as opposed to “worrying about” what the child isn’t grasping in class.
Now, just before I conclude this column and you seem “lost” as to what message I’m trying to relay by describing the learning process as perceived by a parent or teacher in the previous paragraphs, let me emphatically make this point: There IS NO MESSAGE in those paragraphs; all that I’m trying to describe are the feelings and experiences I’ve gone through in life that frame the manner in which I write or formulate my opinions, so that when you finally GET to the end of the column, you can either fully think I’m whatever four-lettered word you’d like to use to describe me, OR you understand whatever point it is I’m trying to get across; the point is, you managed to read the whole piece, and that’s all I was asking you to do…
Ken MacDougall is a retired teacher and former election candidate for the federal NDP.
