Annapolis, -- Dear Parris,
So who needs landslides, anyway? Hope you and Frances like what Hilda Mae has done with the place.
As you know, Governor, education is one of those subjects on which everybody's an "expert." And the further they get from the classroom, the more they seem to know. So before the Ed Lobby starts zapping hyper-jargonized memos at you, please allow a grizzled veteran of the trenches a few moments of your time to make some observations about what's going on in Maryland classrooms today.
From my vantage point at Annapolis High School in your new hometown, I offer five general comments. Any report, strategy, statute or implementation plan that fails to take them into account, Governor, is a waste of your time, my energy as a teacher and the taxpayers' money.
* The "experts" who run Ed World believe in their bleeding little hearts that violence and the decline of civility are secondary issues trumped up by teachers out for public sympathy and higher wages. They're wrong. Disruption is not a peripheral issue; it is the issue.
Like it or not, there are tens of thousands of youngsters in this state who are so inured to rudeness and desensitized to violence that they must be de-programmed before anything good can happen to them in a classroom. Any action plan that fails to quarantine disruptive youngsters and work with them on an intense, continuing basis is a waste of time. Any policy that fails to promote and fund in-school suspension programs and in-house counseling is worthless.
Oh, your counties will talk a good game. But most will set up "discipline committees" composed of bureaucrats and "community leaders" who were decked out in Nehru jackets the last time they chaperoned a prom -- if, in fact, they've ever worked in a school at all. They'll send a few teachers off to become more "sensitized" to their "disadvantaged" students and pretend their mission has been accomplished.
It won't wash. No matter how many utopian noses go out of joint, the mandate must be unambiguous: Create orderly schools now by whatever means necessary or we are doomed to fail.
* Your predecessor, who never met a taxpayer's wallet he didn't like, threw millions of dollars into a reform system that, conceptually, is an inconsistent mess.
Your MSPAP program mandates that grade-schoolers and junior high kids be turned into "critical thinkers" regardless of whether they can read, write, spell or even grunt out a coherent sentence. Anti-intellectual shock troops already patrol school hallways, searching out and reprimanding teachers who dare insist on factual knowledge or even the proper use of English. And God help them if their kids aren't working in groups. "Cooperative learning" is the new reformist mantra.
But your very own "Functional Testing System" insists that high-schoolers memorize and master specific skills and content all by themselves before they can graduate. When they were younger, mere memorization was beneath their intellectual dignity. Now, all of a sudden, if they can't spit it back, no cap and no gown. High schools that can't reconcile these schizoid demands get the evil eye from Nancy Grasmick.
Get it? Illiterate grade-schoolers magically become philosophers by working in groups. Teachers incur administrative wrath by instructing students in the use of proper English. Anyone with a pulse passes junior high school since factual knowledge is taboo and kids are held accountable for nothing. And high schools that manage to get 96 percent of their kids to pass the functional tests "fail" because only 97 percent and above is "satisfactory."
And, Parris, you're hemorrhaging millions to pay for all this.
* More and more, I am stunned by the emotional carnage I see every day. It is no wonder kids are so hard to reach given the magnitude of disasters present in their personal lives.
There is an epidemic of acrimonious divorces, impending family split-ups, tenuous second marriages, abusive relationships and utterly dysfunctional teen-agers. Where have you gone, Ward and June Cleaver?
The level of distraction due to sheer emotional anguish is incredible and until somebody makes an effort to staff us with full-time psychologists and guidance counselors who actually have the time and talent to guide and counsel, we are going nowhere. Conservatives might dismiss this as touchy-feely mumbo-jumbo. What do you care? They didn't vote for you anyway.
* There is no messier, more thankless issue in Maryland today than race. You're not going to want to touch the problem of under-achieving black students with a 10-foot pole, and I can't say as I blame you.
But let me say it's high time we un-mixed the messages being sent to the black children of our state by some of our so-called "community leaders:" Stay in school (but your teachers are racists who hate you). Study hard (but the curriculum is hateful and biased). Stop the violence (but it's perfectly understandable if you beat your classmate senseless since white people have robbed you of your self-esteem).
It's a wonder the kids can even stand up, given the vertigo-inducing messages that bombard them. If you want to strike a blow for quality education in Maryland, Parris, find a way to turn off these race-mongering Johnny-one-notes.
* Teen-age employment is ruining education in America. How can parents permit their children, many of them marginal students, to spend 15, 20 or 25 hours a week hunched over a cash register or deep-fat fryer? Education has been de-prioritized by fast food.
Kids are tired, if not unconscious, during the school day. Challenging courses are forsaken. A's that could produce college scholarships worth thousands become mediocre C's so Susie can fry potatoes for $4.25 an hour. Until somebody convinces parents that minimum wages and maximum academics don't mix, we're going to continue running in circles.
Governor, if you lead the way on any of these issues, I guarantee that people who care about excellence in the classroom are going to love Parris in the springtime.
They'll love him in the fall, too -- November of '98, to be exact, when it will really count.
All the best,
Phil Greenfield teaches at Annapolis Senior High School.