Is It "Just Because?"

05.15.2010

I had a discussion with Rob yesterday about a boy that he knows who is having some trouble at school. The boy is acting out and the parent was surprised to find out that the school wasn’t doing anything about these outbursts. He, I think, has been diagnosed with some disabilities and isn’t receiving the support that he should be receiving. Rob was frustrated to hear that this boy is getting picked on at school and is called names that increases his anger and instigates more outbursts. Having been picked on himself as a kid, Rob didn’t like hearing that the school tried discussing psychological reasons for his outbursts instead of just accepting how difficult it is to be a kid, especially a boy who may stand out from the crowd. Rob kept saying to me that sometimes psychology has nothing to do with it and that it’s merely just about being a kid.

I found myself disagreeing with him and, as usual, felt no hesitancy to express as much. He then told me that he got into fights a lot when he was a kid and that he turned out fine; that the fights had nothing to do with some sort of a psychological meltdown or that it was because of some hidden, deeper meaning. His fights were just about the fact that he was a kid trying to make it in the big, great (kid’s) world.

It’s one thing to find a kid who gets into one fight. Maybe two. But when a kid is getting into repeated fights, I will argue that there’s a deeper meaning. Kids will pick on kids who stand out. Hell, freakin’ adults do that. How many times did I have to listen to my former boss bitch about someone she didn’t consider to be up to her standards? But a kid who constantly disrupts class, gets into fights regardless of repeated steps taken to stop it, or a kid who breaks down emotionally at the slightest discrepancy to the day….I’m sorry, there’s a problem. A psychological problem that needs to be addressed immediately.

We all may have had our moments growing up where we got into fights at school, stole from others (like I did), or were mean ourselves by picking on others and we turned out OK. But I challenge to reflect on those times and what was going on in one's own life at that time that caused the manifestation of such behavior. It’s never because "I just 'felt' like it.” Every action is a reaction to something. This is a constant that leads into our adulthood but something we learn in childhood. Being a kid is never easy no matter where you fit on the spectrum of “normalcy” or “weirdness.”

Charter vs. Public, That Is The Question

04.21.2010

A hot topic going around the LAUSD circuit is charter schools vs. your regular ol’ public school. In the beginning, I was willing to give charter schools a shot because they seemed to be on the right track in terms of what they wanted to achieve and the opportunities that they offered to students. But after two plus years of reading and listening to the people in education, I’m pretty much against them. And, ironically, I’m mostly against them because I went to a private school. [It’s not about me being snobby, I swear; hear me out.]

Charter schools get to create their curriculum any way they want meaning they don’t have to abide by No Child Left Behind. Now don’t’ get me wrong, I think NCLB is an abomination but, just like private schools, charter schools can create their own system without having to necessarily follow the educational laws. But charter schools are still considered to be a part of the State so they are publicly funded. Private schools don’t get money from the State. And they shouldn’t. They’re private. But then, why are charters exempt from following the law?

Second, charters get to accept any student they want. Just like a private school, they get to cherry pick their student body which means they’re only going to choose those that come from solid families and those whose grades are strong, not to mention how they look. (Trust me, these are weighed. I sat in on the meetings and was grilled in to making those judgments myself.) This process leaves many students even further behind. And again, all of this on the taxpayer’s dime.

Third example, and this isn’t really a complaint about charter schools, there’s a person I know whose child attends a charter school and I heard about many complaints from parents about the volunteer time that is required. You’re a freaking parent. You should be involved in your children’s education from all angles. When I was teaching, I constantly saw the same three parents doing all of the work whereas those parents who almost never showed were the ones complaining about how much time was required. Suck it up.

Fourth, there is no guarantee that a charter school is going to stay open the following year. They may have a contract that is good for a year or two but negotiations have to occur in order for the school to remain open. A lot of charter schools close down. So where do the students go? Back to their old schools where now the education has slipped even more because all the good students were distributed to different charter schools. This reshuffling increases stress on a school’s budget.

I will be the first person to proclaim that there needs to be serious educational overhauls, and I was a proponent as early as the 1990s when it was first proposed, to break up LAUSD. It’s too big and is unable to affectively run the thousands and thousands of students that attend its schools. The union needs to get rid of A.J. Duffy whose only interest is to maintain power but do nothing good and the entire system needs to break into pieces. It’s so exhausting to hear the same topics, the same debates, the same bullshit year after year when, in all honesty, only a handful of LAUSD employees truly care about the students’ welfare. Everyone else (administrators and bureaucrats at headquarters) is too concerned with taking home a bloated paycheck to really fight for what’s right.

[RIP, Jaime Escalante.]