DON’T TEACH IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

By J.P. Ahmad

It was during the last few months of my time spent in this type of institution that what was going on finally begin to register. It was testing week and I approached the building as I typically do from the side door leading to the cafeteria hallway. It's a clear door, mostly window like the one you see in the image, but it had a big red label on the window. From 5-feet away the label becomes legible reading “no bullies” or bully free zone” or something like that. I can't quite remember. Behind the blur of red on the door window can be seen the tops of his children lining up to be walked down the hall to their classrooms. This is the image that I started my working day with—a bunch of scrappy little heads walking back and forth like ants encircled by a red ghost buster like anti-bullying sign.


As mentioned earlier, this week was testing week, where the kids stay crammed in their classrooms all day and participate in state-mandated standardized testing in order gauge the performance or effectiveness of the school I was working at. There were no regular classes this week and my job was simple; I had to sit in the hallway all day give various teachers in a certain quadrant of the building bathroom breaks. Fifteen minutes into the start of the testing period my board slumber was startled by the sound of the door right next to me violently thrusting open and the sudden appearance of a pissed-off teacher and one of her sad pupils. The boy slunk down against the wall behind him like a dog being scolded by its owner and the teacher had her finger in his chest and was now mumbling something slightly incoherent but it was obviously some kind of threat. After a few seconds of the disapproving stare down from the teacher she marched off the office, quite literally stomping her feet. Out comes the principle. He pulls the kid aside and in full view of the anti-bullying site I was just talking about, makes a clear threat to the child right in front of me. “Do you want to repeat the fifth grade?” he asks. “Because you don't try your best, I will see to it that you will come right back here next year.” The boy nods in affirmation and walks back to his classroom, leaving now visible the anti-bullying side which was hidden behind his back as he was leaning against the wall. That's what I thought to myself, “what the hell is going on here”?


The whole point of teaching is to impart skills and knowledge—that our culture deems useful and valuable—onto the next generation of kids who will be growing up in that culture. On an anatomical level, this would mean presenting stimuli to the learner that cause for the formation of neural pathways in the brain that contribute to certain behaviors such as reading fluently, writing confidently, or exhibiting the ability to perform accurate arithmetic. Understanding concepts comes after the formation of the neural framework needed to comprehend those concepts and give functional meaning to them. So ultimately, a teacher's job is to stimulate actual physical changes in the brain. Once those changes have occurred, one can then say that learning has taken place. In the one-on-one instructional dynamic, which is the most basic and natural way to teach, the instructor (seen on the bottom of the frame) has the challenge of getting her student to comprehend a concept or exhibit certain desired behavior in a specific amount of time. The instructor is tasked with test presenting varying types of stimulus to the student until the desired response is attained. It creates what I call a feedback cycle where the giver (that is the teacher) constantly changes the stimulus due to the response she's getting from the receiver (which is the student) until of the desired behavior is attained. To do this, the giver must be dialed into the reactions of the receiver at all times in order to gauge what changes should be made to the input stimulus.


An effective teacher should be able to quickly scroll through many different approaches until the one that matches up with the student’s needs is found. This is often done by means of trial and error. The more experience the teacher has with different kinds of individuals, and the better the teacher knows the individual to whom she's sending the stimulus, the more efficiently this sequence or code will be discovered and utilized. I would argue that parents, generally being the ones who know their child the best, would make the most effective teachers. There are obviously many things to get in the way of this happening such as a parent’s lack of expertise in a subject as well as the parents’ generally not being accessible throughout the day due to, at least nowadays, both working. So as result of that reality, most kids today unfortunately are forced to learn in the classroom setting only. The dynamics of the classroom are completely different.


In the group setting, the teacher lectures to an entity called the group, not to individuals. In other words, what the teacher is essentially doing is lecturing to an imaginary average person. The feedback loop does not come into to play because you can't have a feedback loop unless you are engaging with a real person. Then the obvious question becomes:


In a classroom setting, where the teacher is lecturing to an imaginary entity called the group, who in fact is the teacher engaged with?


The answer is—nobody. Don't get me wrong. It is possible to have momentary feedback loops with various individuals in the classroom at different times, but this would be the same thing as having a bunch of min private lessons during one class, instead of the group instruction around which the schools are designed for. Twenty to thirty mini private lessons throughout each class would be an impossible task for the teacher to accomplish in one period. To engage more than one individual in the feedback loop at the same time however, let alone the entire class, is impossible. The only thing a classroom teacher can do is present a general stimulus to a plurality of individuals, and then test to see how many of them have absorbed it. There is no feedback loop involved.


Let's consider what it would be like if we taught swimming like we teach kids in the public schools. We would take a whole bunch of kids, present them with a general stimulus— in this case a swimming pool— and test to see what happens. As you can imagine, some kids would swim, some go straight to the bottom, and a few would probably just sit on the side and not do anything. This would obviously be a horrible way to teach swimming. But this is exactly what we do with kids in the classroom. Stimulus is given in the form of a presentation or lecture, and various children will respond to it in different ways. Of course, there will be those who exhibit the desired behavior right away. Then there will be those who at first appear like they’re paying attention and understanding what's going on, but on closer examination, they’re just zoned out and have no clue what the teachers talking about. Then there will be those who don't seem to respond to the stimuli at all. And some children will, as usual in these kinds of situations, occupy themselves doing something more interesting to them.


So who's learning? Let’s take a closer look. This guy over here?, he's not learning. What about the kid on the right? Well, he is definitely learning about whether he likes drawing or not. And for the guy in front in the gray shirt? Well, it could be possible that is information processing speed is just below the threshold necessary to function in the classroom. It might also be possible that there's just a language barrier getting in the way of him comprehending what the teacher is saying. Either way, he's not learning. That brings us to this guy here. Is he learning? It certainly looks like he learned something; he has the right answer. But if you’re the teacher how do you know he learned in your class? How do you know he didn’t already bring a certain set of knowledge and abilities to the class where he just simply applied it? The truth is it could be quite possibly just a slight amount of learning on kid’s for him to produce the right answer. A slight amount of learning as compared to the massive amount of learning It would take to get the other kids to come up with the same answer.


How much credit goes to the teacher for the fact that this particular individual was able to produce a correct response. I mean surely any credit she would get for this would be canceled out by her failure to get a correct response out of the other kids in the class. Are not all kids equally valid? Using our swimming pool analogy, we can clearly see that the fact that you were able to get one kid to swim, doesn't negate the fact that another kid just drowned. So if you're the teacher, you basically just accomplished nothing—it's a net zero. Furthermore, what happens to the child once the correct answer is produced? That's the end right? There's no more learning for them. Now they just have to sit around and wait for all the remedial sessions to finish up before a new exciting concept gets taught. That’s why you have that all too common problem in public schools of kids who are very bright just getting bored, getting distracted and acting up, and complaining when they get home because they have nothing to learn. They know it all already. Would you be shocked if I told you that for a significant portion of the school day it is possible that nobody is learning? And in that case, what the hell is the teacher doing?


That brings us to our next question: Who is being tested? That's easy—everybody, including the teacher. In order for the school to get its funding and to stay open so the administration that runs the school has a place to go to and make money, they have to fill the classrooms with students. In order to fill the class with students, they have to attract students to the school by maintaining at least a reasonable standard of education—that is, getting good test results. In order for the teachers to get paid they have to produce those good test results. Not necessarily produce learning, but produce good test results. However, teaching the majority of the class (let alone the entire class) to get the correct answer in a public school setting is impossible, which is why you see teachers have these kinds of absolute meltdowns and childlike temper tantrums. For the most part, there's nothing they can do about it and their job is on the line. It’s about money. So in the public school setting, who's working for who?


The more and more kids are kept away from their primary caregivers, that is, the more they are put into institutions for learning such as public schools and daycares, the less time they will have engaged in that feedback loop which I discussed earlier in the video. The feedback loop is really the only effective way to teach children, and for many kids, they don't have that at home. They don't have tutoring. They don't have a parent that sits with them in reeds and does math and the sorts of things that they need to develop for success in the classroom. The only thing they have is the classroom. With an entire generation of kids being raised this way, and with parents more and more having their time monopolized out in the workforce, test scores will inevitably start to decline, which is exactly what has been happening. And this brings us up-to-date with our current education crisis.


So how do teachers make money and maintain job security when that job security is contingent on test scores in the classroom going up? It's quite simple actually; just lower the standards. And if that fails, then you just cheat like they do in Atlanta or Chicago.


Let me walk you through a typical strategy in order to get test scores go up in your classroom. First you start by correctly labeling all the kids in your classroom, so you know which kinds of kids are eligible for taking which kind of test and what would be considered a successful performance on their part when they do take the test. This way, when they take the test and score inevitably well under national standards, the teacher can just shrug her shoulders and say “oh well look what I had to work with.” This child here will be labeled unmotivated and lazy by the teachers when they get with each other in the teachers workroom, but officially he will just be labeled as “emotionally disabled” and special help and provisions will be given to him he takes the test. This guy here will be just labeled as stupid by teachers when they talk to each other during her lunch break, but the official label will be “learning disabled”, and he will get special provisions and help when they take the test. Here's your good student, which will become the favorite student of the teacher in the class. And this kid of course will get labeled as ADD or ADHD and put on medication and probably special provisions will be given to this child as well when testing comes around.


As a result of the combination of lowering standards, helping different kids in different ways during the testing process, and just blatant cheating, test scores will suddenly start to go up again and the teacher will be applauded as a hard-working educator getting results in her classroom. Everybody wins right? Well not exactly. At the end of the day, the teacher gets her money, but the kids get left with their labels, which will follow them around for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately they won't have any skills or knowledge to show for it either. They’ll graduate with nothing to offer the workforce. That's what goes on in here, and this is the only person that benefits from it. So let me ask you again, who you think is working for who?