ROPES' CORNER

Throughout recorded history, teachers have been some of the most respected and honored citizens of all cultures. And that's exactly as it should be, because life is far too complex for our young to survive and flourish using instinct alone. To a degree, this applies even to the less evolved animals. A tiger cub that is not taught to hunt will starve; a young gazelle must be taught to recognize and avoid predators or it will surely end up as lunch; chimpanzees must learn the rules of an intricate social structure. Among these "lower" species, parents teach such lessons. A single tigress possesses all the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of all the preceding generations of tigers; she needs no help in instructing her offspring. Even in some of the more primitive human societies, past and present, there was little need for a great deal of formal education. Parents were able to teach their children everything they needed to know about growing crops, or fishing, or hunting and gathering. But this is the United States, entering the 21^st century; there are some who manage to live without formal training, but they certainly don't thrive.

Last month we made the point that we as a culture are "….so intent on raising our children to be engineers and scientists that we're neglecting the basics." This is true, but there are mitigating circumstances. We live in a goal-oriented society, and we tend to measure success by our ability to acquire material wealth. Our parents were delighted when they could afford a small home, one decent car and a single television. By today's standards such a family would be living at or near the poverty level. We must have everything we want, and have it now, and worry about paying for it later. The wisdom of this lifestyle would be a subject for another rant… er…. essay entirely; suffice to say that this is the world we live in, for better or worse. Our children will have to either live by the rules we've set them, or change the underlying infrastructure of our entire society. Whichever path they choose, they will need to acquire a great deal of knowledge. And it is the task of the teacher to make the required learning accessible and understandable.

You'll note that we used the phrase "required learning" in that last sentence. Those two words are key to this discussion. Our technology has developed at an unbelievable rate in the past century, and our knowledge base has expanded exponentially. There is every reason to think that we will continue this trend for the foreseeable future. But our ability to learn, and apply that learning, have not kept pace; indeed, they haven't changed in thousands of years. We've been forced to make small adjustments, such as starting to teach our children when they're younger, and steering them towards narrower specialties. If a youngster is going to eventually pursue a career in medical research, for instance, he will need to have access to, and be able to build upon the entire store of existing knowledge in the field. This is his "required learning," and it probably does not include the ability to conjugate verbs. His search for a cure for breast cancer will not be abetted by his understanding of objective and subjective case. His laboratory rats will not be impressed by his superb penmanship. He has, at best, twenty years to learn everything he needs to know in order to begin contributing anything of value. Within this context, mastering the finer points of English grammar must be considered a luxury that he can ill afford. In fact, in today's world, the only person who absolutely must master English grammar is one who is going to teach English grammar! It's their "required learning."

And so we continually force our teachers to make compromises. They try to give little Johnny and little Mary a well-rounded, general education. But they realize that, at some point, they're going to have to zero in and concentrate on the things Johnny and Mary really need to know. In the past, students were able to complete a year or two of college before they had to make those choices and decisions. Indeed, many of them graduated with Bachelor of Arts degrees and went on to build fine careers. Much of their advanced training was done "on the job," and their professional growth was slow but steady. Young people are no longer willing to wait until they're forty or older to begin acquiring and showing off their material wealth; they have higher aspirations, and many have college loans that look like the gross national product of a small country. Large corporations pay huge sums to recruit new graduates, so they expect them to be professional and productive the day they start work. So our educational system must produce graduates who are skilled enough to realize their own goals and meet the high expectations of their employers. Schooling can not progress at a leisurely pace, and general studies must be sacrificed in favor of specific, career-related training.

Students and teachers coexist in a pressure-packed environment. The irony is that the professional teacher, who must bear so much responsibility, is not treated nearly as well as the graduates he or she helps to produce. A 22 year-old with a technical degree would not accept a job that paid only as much as his high school teachers earned. There's an old (and not very funny) joke that sums up this situation pretty well. It goes something like this:

A young man dies and goes to Heaven, where he finds he is third in line at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter is taking a much-needed break, so an angel is admitting the newly arrived to Heaven.

The angel tells the three new arrivals that, because so many drug dealers and other criminals have managed to sneak into Heaven, St. Peter must now be a little stricter with the screening process. Each person is required to state his former occupation, tell his history and yearly salary.

The first man in line says, "I was an actor, and I earned $10 million last year."

The angel says, "Okay, you may enter."

He turns to the woman in line and asks her about her life. She states, "I earned $750,000 as an attorney."

The angel thinks for a moment and then lets her in, too.

He turns to the third one in line and asks, "What have you done with your life?"

The man replies, "I earned $8,000 last year….. " "Oh?" the angel interrupts. "What did you teach?"

When one of my sons was in high school, he was having difficulty with a math course he was taking. I asked him why he never went in after school for extra help, and he told me his teacher didn't offer it. I went to the school and confronted the teacher, and asked why he refused to give my son some much-needed assistance. He informed me that he had to leave school immediately after his last class and go to his second job. A teacher's income simply wasn't sufficient for him to support his family. (Side note: his wife also worked full time.) I was struck by the paradox that this man, who was charged with such a heavy responsibility, was being treated like a second class citizen. Our school district spent more money for football uniforms and computer labs than it did on teachers' salaries. It occurred to me that it takes real, flesh-and-blood people to teach students how to operate and program the computers in those labs; what do we do when nobody is willing to take on that job?