There’s a perfect storm a-brewing between the editorial page of the Amarillo Globe-News and the Panhandle Truth Squad. Because of TAKS and other reasons, AGN commentators got solvin’ edumacation on their collective mind. And in my classroom, at 11:45 a.m. on Tuesday, the TAKS is over with for the year, and I have a roomful of freshmen who have finished taking their test and are just sittin’ here with nothin’ to do. (Memo to wingnut teacher-critics: Oh! This is what babysitting a classroom of kids feels like . . . hmmm, nope that’s not what my job is usually like.)
So, here we are at the nexus of Opinion page full of education solutions and teacher with a rare couple of hours of free time. Let’s party.
First up: normally sane Greg Sagan comments on truancy. T’other day the AGN ran a front page story about parents who have been hauled into court because their kids won’t go to school. The way the Globe-News runs the story, AISD is persecuting parents whose children have been ill. AISD also apparently harasses single parents who have to go to work at 5 a.m. and cannot oversee their teenage delinquents who simply refuse to go to school.
ReplyDeleteThis issue has also been in the local television media, reported with approximately the same tone. There are two major problems with the reportage on this issue:
*Reporters credulously believe everything the parents involved tell them. I hate to sympathize with authority, but reporters haven’t really tried to show the school district’s point of view.
*Reporters don’t seem to understand which requirements are AISD policy and which are state law.
Supernanny Sagan looks at the issue from the point of view of a single parent. He naively accepts some of the more outlandish parental claims from the article, like the truant officer who told a single parent to “quit her job”. He sagely informs us that there are four possible parental remedies when a child simply refuses to go to school and wisely critiques each remedy:
* Appeal to his better nature: Supernanny sez some kids have no better nature *Coerce and intimidate: Supernanny sez some kids are bigger than their parents * Bribe: Supernanny sez some kids have no wants and can't be bribed * Hand-hold: Supernanny dismisses out of hand, saying “classrooms lack the space and patience”
Supernanny’s first three analyses are superficial, but acceptable. However, Supernanny completely misses the value of what he calls “hand-holding.” I am a single parent and a teacher. Here’s what I’d do in this situation:
Take off a couple of days from work. Your boss might not like it; at worst you might sacrifice some pay which could be taken out of your child’s allowance, pocket money, or luxuries. But you’re not gonna lose your job over a couple of days. And you don’t have to tell your child that you only plan to take a couple of days off.
Get your child up, get him into the car, get him to school. Go in to the school with him. Stay there with him all day. Do the same the next day. Tell him you’re prepared to do this until he can be responsible for himself. Tell him that you’re going to do it even if you lose your job and have to go on welfare. Tell him you’re going to do it even if the Bush administration cuts all the welfare programs and you have to live in a cardboard box. Tell him that’s how important his education is to you.
Embarrassment should take care of the rest.
And, no, I don’t think the school will mind. The judge who handles my district’s truancies actually orders parents to attend classes with their children. You can squeeze into the classroom. Sit on the floor if you have to.
You might vary this approach, but the point is that a lot of responsibility still needs to fall on parents. The “conservative-values” AGN, Supernanny Sagan, and the local television media are way too accepting of excuses like “we didn’t know we had to bring a doctor’s note to the school.” (Who doesn’t know that?) They are way too reliant on top-down remedies like taking away kids’ drivers licenses. (Um, can’t parents do that, too?) And they’re way too reflexive in their knee-jerk attack of institutions like the school district and the judiciary. (Not that the school district and the judiciary are perfect by any means . . . but parents lie, too, sometimes.)
Sagan needs to take a cue from television’s Supernanny and observe the dynamics of the entire group himself before he barges through the front door and starts changing everything.
Next up: Wingnut Article of Faith #1—What Works in the Private Sector Can Work in Schools
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