If you can read this, thank a teacher. On the other hand, the teacher may think you suck. Or your kids suck. Or you’re a lousy parent and your kids suck. We know this because of Natalie Munroe.
From the PhillyBurbs :
The Central Bucks East High School English teacher who got suspended last week for complaining about her students on a blog is at it again.
And she is making no apologies for what she said – defending herself through her blog and in an interview with this newspaper Monday.
“There are serious problems with our education system today – with the way that schools and school district and students and parents take teachers who enter the education field full of life and hope and a desire to change the world and positively impact kids, and beat the life out of them and villainize them and blame them for everything – and those need to be brought to light. If this ‘scandal’ opens the door for that conversation, so be it. Let that conversation begin. Stay tuned here.”
The school district wasn’t please when it learned of Munroe’s blog posts. Teachers have found it highly inappropriate that she was so disrespectful of her students. She’s accused of exceptionally poor judgment. There is clearly merit to these accusations.
Yet, if no teacher is allowed to say what she really thinks, then we only hear the happy stuff that we want to hear. It doesn’t make the nasty stuff go away. It merely allows us to exist in pleasant denial of reality.
So what does Munroe think of her students?
In one post, written a month after she started the blog, Munroe called her students “rude, lazy, disengaged whiners.” She fantasized in another post about telling their parents what she really thought about them.
She created a list of “canned comments” she thought teachers should be able to choose from for report cards, some of which contained profanity. The list included: “rat-like,” “dresses like a streetwalker,” “frightfully dim,” and “whiny, simpering grade-grubber with an unrealistically high perception of own ability level.”
Ouch. And you thought I was the only one willing to be so blunt.
Munroe explains that this doesn’t mean that every student is a “rude, lazy, disengaged whiner,” just as not every millennial is a Slackoisie.
Munroe says she does not hate her students, and actually likes some of them.
“But the fact remains that every year, more and more, students are coming in less willing to work, to think, to cooperate. These are the students I was complaining about in my blog.
But what parent wouldn’t be happier to hear that junior is a pleasure to have in class? The rub is that the truth isn’t always happy. By the time students learn that they aren’t the next best thing since sliced bread, which will likely come when they are rejected or fired from their first job for gross incompetence and a lousy attitude,
Parents are astounded. How could it be that Muffy isn’t beloved, immediately made CEO and given the big corner office? She’s a wonderful girl. All her teachers said so. Well, yeah, they did, but the only reason they kept shuffling Muffy up through the ranks was to get her out of their class and spare themselves an awkward meeting with you, Mom.
One could well quibble with Munroe’s presentation of her issues, given that they were brutally honest and straightforward. There aren’t too many folks around these days who want to hear the unvarnished truth. Just a little sugar-coating, please. Or as Mary Poppins says, just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. But Munroe didn’t direct her invective at anyone in particular. There was no reason why any parent should take it personally, unless they felt the pinch of a too-tight fitting show.
There are very strong incentives for both school boards and teachers to make parents happy. Parents vote for school budgets, and school budgets fund teacher contracts. Piss off parents and the entire school financing system collapses. And with the possible exception of cop, there’s no better gig out there today than being a public school teacher. It’s sweet.
And if it means the Buffy and Jody make it to adulthood as “rude lazy disengaged whiners,” so what? As long as our beloved students, our beloved parents, are allowed to bask in the glow of sweet teacher comments about how wonderful they are. Even if they aren’t.
As for Natalie Munroe, the chances of her collecting her teacher pension are growing increasingly slimmer. Not because she’s wrong, but because truth has its consequences.
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Apparently, freedom of speech does not apply to teachers.
My boys can be “rude, lazy, disengaged whiners.” But we try to keep that behavior at home. One thing my wife and I have tried to inculate in our boys is that being bright isn’t enough — they have to WORK if they want to succeed. It appears to be paying dividends in our 17 year old as we get good reviews when he is working out of the home.
The argument has been made, and has some merit, that teachers (like lawyers and judges), constrained to limit their speech so as not to reflect poorly on their school and thereby interfere with the educational process. The obvious problem is that this means that we’re treated like mushrooms, though many prefer it that way.
As a parent, I always went into a conference with my kids’ teachers asking, tell me what we need to do better. It drove me nuts to have smoke blown up my butt. There is always something that can be done better, and that’s what I need to know.
As for my son, the most significant thing that pushed him to work harder was his fencing. No amount of happy talk won a fencing competition, and it drove home the point (pun intended) that winning on a national level required both talent and hard work.
Children are vulnernable to teachers’ attitudes and stessors giving credence to parents’ concerns re her blogs.
Kids are raised in ‘systems’..day cares, lachkey programs, after school activities all organized by Authority figures as both partents are required to work to provide for the family unit.
Kids are expected to Succeeed and a lot of pressure is put on them for ‘accolades’. The family unit itself has suffered by a lack of moral fiber and traditional values imposed by the Liberal left agenda in our school system and politics. Equality in genders have resulted in power struggles over Authority over money and raising the children…kids learned to play off this power struggle to get what they need…they learned to be manipulators. Kids grew up and now they are the adults having kids.
We have in America a growing breakdown in the family unit, parenting skills, child develop NOT taught until ordered by divorce courts in custody battles a backwards approach by gov’t in addressing these problems but profitable
Instead of Finger Poiinting which Americans, its gov’t and leaders are so expert at, we need to sit down and work together to address the problems effectively for the sake of our children and future generations.
I am a staunch supporter of free speech — which doesn’t mean it’s wise or prudent to speak freely.
I am also someone who seeks criticism from those whose minds and literary judgment I respect. When I hired my editorial assistant, I told her that it’s her job to tell me my writing isn’t clear, is not funny, etc., etc. If she does, I can make it better before it goes out. I think that thinking needs to be communicated to kids.
If there is a particular point to be made by your capitalizing the first letters of “Finger Pointing” in your final paragraph, then I missed it.
I considered trying to write funny things, but I was afraid everybody would laugh at me.
I think you may be a bit captured by good guy/bad guy thinking, here.
It’s possible for two things to be true at once: that a significant number of Munroe’s pupils are lazy and entitled, and that Munroe is herself a nasty, entitled, and self-centered drama queen.
I mean, unless “rat-like” is somehow a trenchant commentary on upbringing and ability.
There isn’t enough to go on to suggest that Munroe’s a “nasty, entitled and self-centered drama queen,” aside from the fact that she chose teaching as her vocation. That said, what’s your problem with “rat-like”? It’s the favored description for most low-calorie rat substitutes.
Oh, for the days when a teacher could just say, “Look, I’ve asked you to stop talking and sit down twice. Next time, Mr. Smith & Wesson is doing the telling.”
Classroom standards of discipline definitely dropped when they disarmed the teachers…
I don’t understand why she still teaches if she dislikes her students so much. Why doesn’t she change her job?