Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Fishtown on the Rio Grande
I leave at sunrise every morning for a 30-mile drive north from Santa Fe into a rural district of New Mexico tucked into the upper Rio Grande valley. I try to time my departure to coincide with a specific moment when the horizontal rays of sunrise strike a natural cliff formation known as Las Barrancas. There, for one brief minute, the cliff face is revealed in all its contours like a mighty fortress brooding over the valley. The sudden contrast of light and shadow manifest in brief majesty before an angry sun turns the landscape into uniform baked adobe.
I have a great deal of sympathy for the first governors of the province, who continually referred to the region in letters to the viceroy as “This Miserable Kingdom.” Spanish colonists fought material poverty on a daily basis as they clawed out an existence that was never better than mere subsistence.
I’m fighting a more recalcitrant foe. I teach school in Fishtown on the Rio Grande, where the main enemy is moral poverty.
Our nation is dotted with thousands of Fishtowns. Race and ethnography differ from town to town. Some Fishtowns are, in fact, the neighborhoods of our inner cities. Lest you be as foolishly romantic as I once was in the belief that rural poverty is somehow noble because, you know … at least rural people have the land, let me assure you that rural poverty is every bit as grinding and soul-killing as urban poverty.
The pathologies are the same. The moral poverty is the same too. There was a time when the acequia that still runs through campus, a modest irrigation ditch, meant the difference between survival and starvation. The only person with more authority than the mayor was the major domo, who conscripted the populace into the job of ditch expansion and maintenance. You worked or you starved. Nothing pleased me more this morning than to see the acequia in full flow. Somewhere downstream there’s a grandfather planting the seeds of this year’s corn and bean crops.
I teach school in Fishtown. Maybe I should say that I attempt to teach school in Fishtown. There’s no longer any need to work in Fishtown, because the federal government guarantees subsistence. My students are constantly distracted with electronic devices, they won’t do their work, and their parents are indifferent to education. My principal gets an earful of abuse when she suspends a student. Why do you suppose? Because during a suspension parents become suddenly responsible for their wayward progeny. How inconvenient!
Cicero complained in his commentaries that when the state provides bread, the populace refuses to work. Nothing about human nature has changed in 2,000 years — except that now the vices are multiplied by material abundance. Until the state can’t subsidize vice anymore because the state is out of money.
And that, my brothers and sisters, is the seed corn of a conservative revolution. Because conservative virtues are based on survival. It really is that simple. So say I.
Published in General
I think you are right on the money. People don’t need to worry about survival anymore in this country. They can still eat, have TV (cable, in fact), some have cars, most have cellphones, i-Pads, etc. and want to know where the voucher is for them to get something to eat while mama is having her surgery. “I’m entitled, don’t you know.” Don’t you dare mention taking away their “draw”. That means they actually have to work for what they get. It is a learned behavior, working the system. We just have to find the courage to dismantle it before it dismantles us.
I’m astounded that people given subsistence and refuse to work become morally impoverished. I prefer to think of them as dreamers. Something that encourages them and honors their heroism. It ain’t easy being sleazy.
My opinion of public schooling is so low I tell myself it has reached bottom and can go no lower. You are not aiding me in that endevour sir.
Yet you are still there, working through this insanity and trying to educate your students in such an impossible situation. I’m unsure if I could do the same. I am impressed.
I had someone come to me asking for a very large favor today. He offered what was a small sum for it but a large sum for him. My response to him was that I’d do it for free if he quit drinking alcohol(he has an issue), ate well and exercised. I told him if he cannot take stock, pride, and interest in himself then why should I give a darn about him. We shall see.
I am still kind in life but am past the point of truly caring about those who cannot see the decent path in life. In fact, I want them to suffer so that those who do care pull their big boy/girl pants on and work instead of begging or using government agencies where they are uncalled for.
My heart is not dead, yet it has hardened. I understand the road you are walking, I may be walking it myself.
Amen! My own brief foray into teaching showed much the same. I remember a longtime teacher telling me, that what with the self-esteam lessons the kids didn’t know [CoC] but were proud of it.
In elementary school there are throw away parents but never ever throw away kids. By the time they are 15, a kid not interested in school should be working or in a trade school.
Long ago I taught elementary school. There were 6th graders that everyone, themselves, the community, their parents, their classmates, would have been better off if they were apprenticed to a blacksmith, learned to handle a team and drive a wagon, went to work as domestics, got on as a farmhand than going to Junior High.
This is an important post. Depressing, but important. There is clearly a line where helping a person in need can lead to lifelong dependency, and the helping turns to a slow but steady erosion of the human spirit.. I’m not certain where that line is, but I know that once a person is receiving an unending stream of monthly checks from the government the line has been crossed.
My late brother-in-law succumbed to such “help.” Alcohol and drug abuse led to him being “disabled.” For years, he and his family subsisted on government handouts, which he referred to as his “paycheck.” If it weren’t so tragic it would be funny.
It’s worth it if even one frees themselves. Perhaps you are trying too hard to ‘change the world’. This happens one person at a time. The book ‘The Glass Castle’, by Jeanette Walls comes to mind and the subtle encouragement given by the teacher who was head of the class paper (she did not befriend her, or give her money interestingly enough).
My fiancée is a high school special education teacher and she encounters “parents” like this all the time. Legally the school is required to make a special education plan for each special needs student. This entails sitting down with the parent, a psychologist, advisor, and a few others depending on the student in question. Too often she will tell me of a meeting where it took multiple tries to get the parent to come in, only to have them go through the motions.
Another fun fact, the school has a program that requires the teachers to post pretty much everything online for easy access. Parents can view homework due, test and quiz scores, attendance, etc. Although it takes a few minutes to go online and see how their kid is doing many parents call in (usually with only a few weeks left in the semester) shocked and outraged little Johnny is failing.
Forget all the talk of universal daycare, we already have it.
My sister teaches middle school at a school chock-full of at-risk/low-performing kids. I’d say the only point she’d disagree with is the disinterest of parents: many of her parents are immigrants. They want their kids to do well, show up at all the conferences, etc., but can’t help them at all. Which gets to point one:
Schools outsource a lot of learning to parents. We get a thick pack of “Homelink” parent’s instructions for math and we’re expected to drill on all sorts of reading, spelling, etc. It isn’t that hard, but it requires an ability to read and follow directions.
My sister is crushed by the administrative overhead. Layers upon layers of reports…and you mentioned individualized learning plans. The money we’ve poured into K-12 has gone everywhere but the classroom.
Kids are hopelessly behind by the time they’re in middle school. We’re talking struggles with 3rd and 4th grade 3Rs. Per several comments above, there may be people who simply can’t hack school work. But there aren’t many drover job openings these days. You can’t work on many shop floors these days without decent math and computer skills.
Finally, for all the overhead, teachers get little support from their administration when it comes to classroom management. The Mugwump related the suspension conundrum. Therefore, new teachers must treat their students like dirt…or be ground into the dirt themselves. Dog-eat-dog.
Thank you for this and other posts. I don’t comment on all of them, but I have found them all interesting.
Thank you, too, for the work they chronicle. There are some powerful vicious cycles at play there, but starting some virtuous cycles can make a real difference over time.
Apropos of out of control classrooms and AWOL administrators:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/16/teacher-fired-after-allegedly-ordering-hit-on-seventh-grade-student