The Problem With Education

This was my last day in that assignment as the yearbook advisor at a middle school in the San Fernando Valley. When this school offered me the job of substituting for a computer teacher, they didn't tell me that I'd be adopting a dysfunctional yearbook staff. They didn't tell me that I'd have to be the one to dislodge the yearbook from the pit of apathy and neglect where the last advisor dumped it. They gave me almost no help at all. I told the kids in the staff that if it hadn't been for me, they would have had a different substitute teacher every day. They asked me why I cared, as if I shouldn't. I cared because it's just wrong for the school to let things get this bad and I hate that. I didn't tell them that, though. I was struggling to lock them out from the computers to keep them from playing games.

I wrote letters to all the parents of the yearbook staff as well as the principal. Only one parent called me, and that was only because I had called her. If the other teachers don't care, and the principal doesn't care, and the parents don't care, why should I? This speaks to the problem with education in Los Angeles, and also with America. The parents just want school to be a place for them to dump their kids, a day care center. The principals are too busy to care about what's going wrong. The teachers who I thought were all saints turn out to be just as apathetic as anyone else. The students who just want to party in the classroom win, and the good students who really want to learn lose. I'm starting to think that I need to get out of education.