The beggining and the end...
Monday marked the day that all school age children dread, or I should say; most school age children dread. It was the first day of the new school year, at least here in Texas anyways. It also marked the first day of retirement for one of my older brothers. After 40 years of teaching and coaching he decided to call it quits and I can’t blame him one bit. The last 15 years of his teaching career have been extremely difficult for him.
Forty years will see changes
When your career spans 40 years you most certainly will see changes in your profession. Some of the changes might be for the better and mark a big improvement and others might not be as good. The teaching profession takes a certain kind of person. I don’t want to piss off any teachers here since I know there are some here on steemit, but if you are honest with yourself I think you would have to agree with me when I say, “a certain kind of person.”
I wouldn't have made...
My brother was that kind of person and still is even though he is no longer teaching. Personally, I couldn’t do the job of being a teacher; my brother lasted 40 years in a profession that if I were in it I wouldn’t have lasted 40 hours. I am just not that kind of person.
April 20, 1999
Before I get sidetracked, which I have been able to mange quite well lately, let me explain why the last fifteen years have been difficult for him. A lot of teachers who have been in the profession for a while will always point to April 20,1999 as the day the teaching profession started to really change, but if those teachers knew anything about history, which is a subject teachers teach, they would know that what took place that day had been going on in the schools for over 100 years at that point.
Words have meanings...
The education profession, ever since the early 1900’s hasn’t been about educating young minds, it has been about teaching, and words have meanings, different words can sometimes be substituted with no loss of meaning but there is a difference between teaching and educating.
Basics...
The basic definition of” teach” means to show or tell someone how to do something. Education or educating on the other hand is a more involved process and involves stimulation of the mind of the person who is being educated, education involves thinking.
Back in the early 1900’s wealthy men like Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockefeller needed workers for their factories. They didn’t need educated thinkers that might end up being in competition with them so they started foundations that had to do with education. Donating money is the easiest way to get what you want and they knew it, so by donating to schools and universities it was easy to influence exactly what would be taught and how.
So, you won’t be going to meet your son or daughter’s educator in the next few weeks when open house rolls around you will be going to meet their teacher. School districts don’t hire educators to work in the class rooms with students they hire teachers for that line of work.
Dumb down for a reason
People in the USA were dumb down for a reason and it still continues to this day, probably more out of habit than any other reason, since most factories and plants have moved manufacturing to foreign countries for cheap labor and less government restrictions.
When you have done things with a purpose for well over 60 or 70 years it is hard to break that cycle even though the initial reason for the action no longer exists. The factories really started closing up in the 70’s and 80’s here in the USA, that is where the 60 or 70 years comes from, the last 35 or 40 years has just been the continuation of the practices, old habits are really hard to break.
On the edge...
I said I wouldn’t get side tracked and I’ll be damned if I am not just right on the edge of that, but it is important to know the history if even just a little bit of it.
Back to my brother...
Back to my brother, the last 15 years were tough on him because I always kept bringing up the fact that teaching kids how to memorize answers to state required proficiency tests is not giving the kids an education. It is adding to the problem in my opinion. There isn’t much opportunity for people who can’t think and thinking is something that has to be practiced and learned by trial and error in some cases. The more times we had these type discussions the more he started to see that what I was saying was in fact true.
History and science...
Seeing how he taught history and science, which I actually like both of those, he would occasionally get questions from me about particular items that interested me in those areas. “Just how fast is this ball we call earth spinning by the way?” I would always tell him that it didn’t seem to spinning any faster than 800 mph to me, I just can’t believe it is going at 1,000 mph.
Millions of barrels...
And just how many dinosaur carcasses does it take to make a barrel of oil? This planet had to be wall to wall dinosaurs in order to make all that fossil fuel we have been pumping out of the ground at millions of barrels a day for well over 100 years now.
The more I questioned him on the things he was “teaching” the more questions he started having going through his mind. That is why the last 15 years have been tough on him, none of the kids in any of those classes he was teaching were asking any questions, and if he they did all he had to do was point to the book and page and tell them to read it or he would read it to them.
Magical forces...
My favorite question was always about gravity. You know gravity right? It is that magical force that keeps the water in the oceans so it doesn’t fly off the surface of this spinning ball we are on, yes that gravity. The same gravity that leads us to say what goes up must come down.
Up , up and away...
How can a force that is so strong as to keep the water on the surface of the earth not be strong enough to keep a little helium balloon from floating away? I don’t know what Sir Isaac Newton was drinking or smoking when that apple fell from the tree but I would damn sure like to have some of it, I might be able to come up with some theories of my own if I did.
The more we talked, and I questioned, the less he was maintaining that “certain type of person” characteristics.
Damn lucky...
I never was a good student when I was in school, in fact a good case could be made that I was one of those kids who slipped through the cracks of the education system, and came out of school uneducated. Man looking back on that after all these years I feel damn lucky.
Life lessons...
I have learned a lot of life lessons in those years and I learned a lot about just how things are and why. Those are things that are not taught in schools and for good reason, if they taught those things it would be harder and harder to find those certain type of people needed to keep the myths alive.
Enjoy your retirement brother, I promise not to ask any more questions.
