Teaching against culture

Matt Amaral, Teach4Real - This new generation, the one we cram into tiny classes with way too many students, has not been defined by the experts. This generation has its own culture just like all the generations before them. It is an American culture that is a unique mix of religions, practices, beliefs, morals, and all the other ingredients that create who we are. Unfortunately, that mix seems to be diluted by dumb.

For example, if our young women want to hear the highest paid speaker this country on abstinence, they will listen to the words of someone who has never practiced it, and has a child because of all the sex she had. If they dream of touring the country giving speeches, like Mark Twain, or Cornell West, they no longer need a PhD. Now Universities like Rutgers are paying the dumbest people on earth a year’s salary to speak to their college students simply because they were on television. In fact, the most popular of these “tours” is by a man who was born with everything, and has spent that everything on mounds of cocaine and porn stars.

This isn’t anything new. Critics of the direction of American culture have been pointing this out for decades. Whether you want to blame Elvis’ happy hips, MTV, or Reality TV, it seems we have reached the point of no return…

Here’s my problem.

Our students come to school and we try and teach them the exact opposite of everything our culture is telling them. We tell them that to practice abstinence you can’t be an expert on sex. We tell them that if you want people to listen to you, you have to know what you’re talking about. We tell kids that if you want to write a book some day, you need to learn how to write. But none of this is interesting. None of this is entertaining. So we find ourselves feeling like the adult’s in the old Charlie Brown cartoons, telling kids to study hard and be respectful. WAAAAWAAAWAAAA.

Why be respectful? That ain’t going to get them on television. They’d rather be like Chris Brown. . .

We are teaching against everything our culture is screaming, and we are losing. People want the easy path to success, and don’t want to have to work hard. So when we try to get them to work at all, they don’t see the value in it. They don’t see the value in education, and they don’t see it because our culture doesn’t put value in education either.

Think I’m exaggerating? Who are we as a society taking benefits away from even as we speak? Teachers. Who are already notoriously underpaid, and a laughing stock among professionals? Teachers. Where are we making cuts and sending out pink-slips? Education. The kids aren’t making up in their head that education isn’t important. Our policies and the way we treat those in education are showing it to them.

We live in a country of extremes. Our music is extremely ignorant, our TV shows are extremely repulsive, and our experts don’t have expertise, they are just popular and good looking—so that’s really all our kids want to be.