Fire the bitch!

Right and wrong. That's what kids are supposed to learn in kindergarten aren't they? That's what their teachers need to understand if they are to lead by word and deed. So explain this one to me. Forget about politics for one minute. Let's talk about common sense.

A five-year-old kid has a disability. An illness. He hums and eats his homework, not because he's naughty, not because he's trying to hurt or harm anyone, but because he has something called Asperger's Syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism. The school knows this. They tell his mother. It's not as if they don't understand what's going on, or think that he's acting out for no reason.

What's the job of the local public school in these circumstances? Easy. Even a five-year old could answer this one. To teach him. To make sure he is safe. To help him, and his classmates, learn to live in this world, with respect, and kindness, and tolerance, for all, especially for those who are different.

There are teachers who have no common sense, no decency and no shame. If the news reports of how Wendy Portillo treated Alex Barton are even partly right, if they contain even a grain of truth, this is a woman with no business in a classroom. What the reports, and his mother, are saying is that Ms. Portillo kicked the five-year-old boy out of the classroom for being himself, and then turned her classroom in Port St. Lucie, Fla. into the set of "Survivor," where the kids got to vote on whether to let their classmate back in. By a 14-2 vote, they gave him the thumbs down.

Here's the amazing part, though. She hasn't been fired yet. You and I are reading about this, but she's still on the payroll. "Ms. Portillo has been reassigned outside of the classroom at the district offices until any further action may be determined," the St. Lucie County School District is reported to have said in a statement. Come again. Tell me what further action needs to be determined. Tell me why it takes them longer to vote thumbs down on her than it did for her to organize the vote against her own student. Tell me what job she could possibly be doing in the district office that can be capably done by a person of such total and complete lack of intelligence, judgment, decency and compassion.

Now, could a mistake have been made? Could all these news accounts be wrong? Could the boy's mother and the school district and all the reporters covering this story have missed some essential point - like it didn't happen, this is all a hoax, there is no such kid as Alex Barton and no such teacher as Wendy Portillo? I'd like to believe that.

But as bad as the media can be, as many mistakes as all of us can make, this has a certain smell about it. The smell of the line between entertainment and education disappearing. The line between teaching a class and hosting a show, between educating and amusing your charges, between standing up for what's right when you're in front of the room and indulging your own fantasies and foibles.

I don't disrespect teachers. Quite the opposite. It's what I do, what I've been doing for decades, and while I'm lucky enough, at the college and law school level, to be paid better than kindergarten teachers are, it is because I realize just how important what we do is that I have no patience at all for those who abuse the privilege of teaching.

Teaching is a sacred responsibility. Public school teachers (the good ones, and most of them are) don't get paid enough, and they don't get enough respect, but one thing you do get, whether you want it or not, is power. You have the power to make a difference in the lives of those who are stuck listening to you, whether they want to or not, for hours on end. You have the power to influence how they think about themselves and each other. You have the power to lead, for good and for ill.

Those who use that power well garner enormous rewards, if not in dollar terms, in the personal satisfaction that comes from doing something important, changing people's lives, forming relationships that last and make life worth living. Those who abuse that power deserve to be fired. Thumbs down. Over and out. WE who are teachers have our fingers on the buttons, not of weapons but of lives. We make mistakes, all of us, but some mistakes are inexcusable, and some wrongs cannot be forgiven.

If what is being said today about Wendy Portillo is true then there are no explanations, no justifications, no second acts for her. She does not have what it takes to be a teacher. She does not deserve the power, or the respect. Let her go work for a game show. Kindergarten is real life.

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Skipping Science Class, Continued

Three years ago, I posted about some disturbing trends in UK science education:

Instead of learning science, pupils will "learn about the way science and scientists work within society". They will "develop their ability to relate their understanding of science to their own and others' decisions about lifestyles", the QCA said. They will be taught to consider how and why decisions about science and technology are made, including those that raise ethical issues, and about the "social, economic and environmental effects of such decisions".

They will learn to "question scientific information or ideas" and be taught that "uncertainties in scientific knowledge and ideas change over time", and "there are some questions that science cannot answer, and some that science cannot address". Science content of the curriculum will be kept "lite". Under "energy and electricity", pupils will be taught that "energy transfers can be measured and their efficiency calculated, which is important in considering the economic costs and environmental effects of energy use".

A couple of days ago, the Telegraph had an article about the Government's new national science test and the unbelievably simplistic questions it contains. For example:

In a multiple choice question, teenagers were asked why electric wires are made from copper. The four possible answers were that copper was brown, was not magnetic, conducted electricity, or that it conducted heat.

This question can of course be answered without knowing anything at all about either electricity or copper. Demonstration:

Why is unobtanium used to summon the Gostak?

1)Unobtainum is purple

2)Unobtanium is not magnetic

3)The Gostak has a strong affinity for unobtainum

4)Unobtanium is attractive to gnomes

It's pretty clear that the desired answer is (3), even if you don't know what unobtainium is or what (who?) the Gostak might be. The question on the U.K. "science test" might be a test of the ability to read and perform very simple logic; it has nothing to do with the measurement of scientific knowledge or the understanding of scientific methods. In my 2005 post, I wrote:

At least in the U.S., the vastly-increased spending on education over recent decades has been driven in large part by the conviction that we are living in a more scientific and technological society, and that schools must provide students with appropriate knowledge in order for them to be able to succeed in the job market and to fulfill their roles as citizens. I feel fairly sure that the same kind of reasoning has been used to justify educational expenditures in the U.K. So, the schools have taken the money on pretext, and are now failing to perform the duty that should go with it.

Melanie Phillips, in her post criticizing the new U.K science program, said "The reason given for the change to the science curriculum is to make science `relevant to the 21st century'. This is in accordance with the government's doctrine of `personalised learning', which means that everything that is taught must be `relevant' to the individual child." To which I responded in my post:

"There are so many things wrong (with the U.K.'s new approach to science education) that it's difficult to know where to start. First of all: it's a natural human characteristic to be curious about the universe you live in. Schools should encourage this curiosity, not smother it in the name of a fake "relevance."

In A Preface to Paradise Lost, C S Lewis contrasts the characters of Adam and Satan, as developed in Milton's work:

Adam talks about God, the Forbidden tree, sleep, the difference between beast and man, his plans for the morrow, the stars and the angels. He discusses dreams and clouds, the sun, the moon, and the planets, the winds and the birds. He relates his own creation and celebrates the beauty and majesty of Eve.Adam, though locally confined to a small park on a small planet, has interests that embrace `all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth.' Satan has been in the heaven of Heavens and in the abyss of Hell, and surveyed all that lies between them, and in that whole immensity has found only one thing that interests Satan. And that "one thing" is, of course, Satan himself.his position and the wrongs he believes have been done to him. Satan's monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament.

One need not believe in a literal Satan, or for that matter be religious at all, to see the force of this. There is indeed something Satanic about a person who has no interests other than themselves. And by insisting that everything be "relevant" and discouraging the development of broader interests, the educational authorities in Britain are doing great harm to the children put in their charge.

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