Two reforms for high school

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Two reforms for high school				November 10, 2007

“In the high school in which I was an observer, I saw students talking in class, not listening to lectures, having conversations, putting their heads on their desks and tuning out. Teachers talked about what a struggle it was to get students to turn in their homework. Students picked up enough information to pass a test, and then totally forgot whatever it can be said that they had learned.” Thus ethnographer Herbert Childress.

Intellectual desuetude barely describes the current mind-set of students. The morale of teachers is downright dormant. Parents are disgruntled.

On the basis of discussions I’ve had with parents and teachers who responded to my last column, I posit the following as areas in which a change of course is essential.

Block scheduling, along with classes that begin at 7:30 a.m., must go.

There is no study on earth that indicates any benefit whatsoever to teenagers who have to get up at 5 a.m. to be on a bus by 6 for classes that begin at 7:30. Making students indentured servants to those who put the juggling of bus schedules ahead of sound educational theory is simply madness incarnate.

Making them sit through classes that last 90 or 100 minutes is madder still. Most teachers agree that students who are sleepy to begin with have an attention span that may get them through a class lasting 45 or 50 minutes, but no longer. Hence teachers have to resort to other “modalities” to entertain students for the remainder of the class. Videos, game-playing and other non-academic junkery fill the time. What’s the point?

The point is that school systems have to hire fewer teachers when block scheduling prevails. The bottom line becomes the telos of education.

Well, hooey to that. It’s time to return to 50-minute classes that run from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Teachers should teach no more than four 50-minute classes and be assured of one planning period.

As it stands now, teachers are put through the wringer from 7 in the morning until, at times, 5 or 6 in the evening. They go home, eat supper, if they’re lucky, and spend their evenings grading homework or tests. Some are up at 4 the next morning to prepare for the day’s classes. This is a life?

In addition to instruction, teachers are expected to do after-school “athletic tutoring” for players who are failing, sponsor clubs in their field, attend faculty meetings, meet with counselors for special education students, meet with parents, supervise float-making for Spirit Week, chaperon tours, sponsor junior and senior class events, attend pep rallies and supervise students in detention.

This is to say nothing of meaningless, busy-work lesson plans, reams of bureaucratic forms to be filled out for attendance, grades and special education students, or the mounds of e-mail from administrators and counselors that they have to deal with each day.

No wonder they’re pooped.

Administrators are expecting far too much of their teachers, and this must stop. Planning periods should be sacred. No meetings, no interruptions. Let the teachers alone.

With the exception of tutoring and sponsoring clubs in their area of interest, other grunt work should be turned over to administrative employees. Time-devouring lesson plans should be dumped.

As for our students, it is indeed unfortunate that they live in a culture that minimizes academic achievement and, as one parent wrote, iconizes sports figures or the likes of Britney Spears.

Why at Jamestown High School do students get a half day off for decorating the school for Spirit Week to glorify football players? When was the last time you heard of a Spirit Week to honor scholastic achievement? Where are the pep rallies for and pictures of students who have excelled on the SATs or gotten straight As in math?

I should note that the quote with which I started this column came from a manifesto distributed by a vice principal to staff at an area high school. The title of the piece is “Seventeen Reasons Why Football Is Better Than High School.” In it, Childress, who is deadly serious, lists 17 ways in which football constitutes a greater benefit to students than boring academic courses like English and math.

I submit that if a high school vice principal is touting this, we are in a deeper educational and cultural morass than we ever imagined.

One encouraging sign is that Congress may well decide not to renew the No Child Left Behind Act. This motherboard of standardized testing has failed completely to fulfill its mission.

One can hope only that the SOLs and high school curriculums that have become as contorted as Medusa’s snakes to accommodate them will soon give way not to football, but to course requirements that persuade our students to become more involved in the serious questions facing our nation and our world.

It is up to parents in revolt to change our sluggish educational system. It is up to them to demand a change in priorities and the academic structure that is serving our students and their teachers so poorly. As long as we leave our high schools solely in the hands of squabbling school boards and entrenched administrators, we will continue down the path of mediocrity and the bottom line.

If we allow that, we deserve the inferior resultant products that represent the future of this nation.