Every year in my Theater I class, I do a section on the anatomy of speech. I teach about the diaphragm, the larynx, epiglottis, trachea, vocal folds, and all the articulators (tongue, teeth, etc.) I feel it is important for them to know how we produce speech as a basis on how to modulate that speech.
Of course, every year I face a barrage of bitching, and the perpetual question, "Why are we learning this? This isn't science class!" I don't take it personally, I just calmly explain the value of understanding these things, even though I know that they only hear that muted trumpet sound that covered anything Charlie Brown's teacher said.
But then we actually start the discussion, and the questions begin.
"Can you die from hiccups?"
"If a girl has an adam's apple, that means she used to be a guy, right?"
"Guys have one less rib on one side, right?" (I love getting this one.)
"Why do old guys who smoked have those robot voice things?
"How does a pill know where to go to work?"
"Is it true that humans shouldn't drink milk, because it's basically like poison to us?" (this one will be important in a minute.)
"Do your teeth grow back?"
"I heard that you can get pregnant from anal sex, is that true?"
"If you had AIDS, would you know it?"
All of these are off topic. We will be talking about resonators, and that will remind them of some question they always wanted to ask, and so they do, totally throwing off the discussion.
And you know what? I let them. I think it's great that they are willing to ask basic, unusual, personal, or even scary questions in class (see the AIDS comment above.) I do my best to answer, and let them know when I don't have the answer, and encourage them to go find out from a reliable source.
But there are also a lot of very basic questions, or things they clearly do not understand. Really basic stuff, that anyone who has taken biology should be familiar with.
Since most of them are freshmen, it makes sense that many of them don't know these things. But some of them are 11th and 12th graders, and I know for a fact that their teachers covered these topics. Some of them had my wife, and if there is a single human on the planet you cannot impeach for thoroughness in science instruction, it is she.
What these kids lack is not the knowledge (they lack that too, but that's easily overcome.) What they lack is the basic idea of how to be educated. They exhibit next to no intellectual curiosity, seeing teachers as walking Wikipedia "Plain English" version. If we cannot give them the information in a short sentence, it's not worth knowing. And NOTHING is worth doing research on your own time.
This question and answer period is one of the only times the whole year that I have them interested, and that's because I'm willing to talk about the things (usually dirty or gross,) that teachers normally don't discuss in school.
The rest of the year, I get nothing but blank stares, sullen sighs, or the always charming sound they make when they suck their teeth in disdain.
Now the soapbox portion of this post.
And that makes me think of all this "Why Can't Johnny Read?" crap we've been hearing about for the last several decades. There are tons of reports and studies that confirm that students are performing poorly on standardized tests, and the dropout rate is alarming. No one will deny that we have a real, and troubling problem with our public education today.
But here's the thing, I don't hear a lot about the causes of this academic decline. No one talks about the changes in the overall society around us since the days when Johnny could read. New technology, cultural shifts, changing demographics and politics, none of that ever comes up in these discussions.
The only answer that we get for why this is happening is that the very idea of public school is flawed. We have decried the deplorably ineffective model of a teacher at the front of the classroom, simply throwing facts and figures at the students, who are expected to somehow translate this institutionalized pablum into usable knowledge. It is outdated at best, and has always been ineffective at worst. Those teachers who attempt to adhere to such methods are disregarding the welfare of their charges and should be removed from the classroom.
But here's the problem: those methods are the ones that were used on all of us. Those terrible methods were all we had, and we had to meet the teacher in the middle. We read books on our own time, we took notes without PowerPoint, and we were expected to ask questions when we didn't understand.
It started at home. I'm not an evangelist for homeschooling, but in the years before you send a kid to school in the first place, you are expected to have schooled them at home. Waiting for them to pick up all they need to know on the first day of kindergarten is straight negligence in my opinion.
But today, in order to address the problems in the system, we put all the onus on the teachers. As I've mentioned before, the new thing is to ask teachers to be the total solution, and to also ask them to pay all the penalties when the change doesn't happen.
Now they want to tie teachers' salaries to student performance. That is far too big of a topic to tackle here, so we'll have to make that its own post for another day.
At what point is there to be any accountability (a word that sets teachers' teeth on edge,) for parents who send their kids to school unprepared? Or never bother to keep up with how they are doing once they are in school? Or impose no consequences for bad grades, or worse, insist it is the teachers' fault that their kid is failing all their classes? And what redress does a teacher have against a chronically disruptive student whose parent always takes the kid's side? How do we educate such a recalcitrant student without parental support?
And at what age can a student be expected to be accountable for his or her own actions? These kids want to go out and "act like grown ups" when it comes to sex, drugs, and booze, but when it's time for them to take responsibility for their poor choices (like not turning in a single assignment,) we are reminded that they are "just kids."
I know some conservatives who grow livid at the idea of social assistance programs like welfare, and insist that citizens need to hoist themselves up by their own bootstraps, but when asked about kids who constantly fail in school, they point to the teacher unions. At what age do those bootstraps grow in?
Now, full disclosure, there ARE crappy teachers. The "is milk poison?" question comes from kids who have a particular health teacher I know of. And that isn't even the craziest thing this individual asserts in class. It's terrible, and the union absolutely does interfere with getting rid of blatantly bad teachers (more on that another post.)
But you had bad teachers too. Think back; you remember that one crazy lady you had in high school. And coach what's-his-name, who had no business being in a classroom. But can you honestly say that they are the reasons for all you troubles? I had a terrible Anatomy & Physiology teacher, but I wanted to learn the subject, and I had a textbook and a brain, so I learned tons.
I also had great teachers: Beahan, Colton, Mitchell, and many others whose names I have forgotten. And guess what? I failed most of them. Repeatedly. They were great teachers who did their best, and I failed their classes because I didn't care enough. My classmates passed, because they cared. Those teachers gave me the same excellent attention and beyond, as they struggled in vain to convince me to apply myself.
They did not fail me, I failed myself. And I am grateful to all of them.
Now it is my turn. I do my very best to reach these kids, who have been raised in a culture of instant gratification and unlimited access. They have more knowledge at their fingertips then any generation in history, and it has made them lazy, entitled, and self important. And they have heard for years that it's their teachers' fault when they don't learn, so why should they try harder? Or at all?
So I do what I can, when I can.
And no, you can't die from hiccups.
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