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There are some good teachers who are doing good things in the public school system. I know this is hard to believe, but it is true. While many institutions have lost the core mission to simply educate students, not every person in a position of authority in front of children has some weird agenda that will end up on Libs of TikTok. Perhaps there is even a silent majority of teachers who simply want to teach well?
Now I understand the pessimism you might feel when living in what one might call "interesting times." I have personally been forced to stop academic instruction at a public high school for half of my class as all of my kids were forced to participate in an LGBTQIA2S+ Pride Parade, whatever their beliefs about such matters. I have personally listened to administrators discuss highly charged political issues over the intercom in a public school as if everyone subject to those voices from on high has experienced some "trauma du jour" in the exact same way. I have been yelled at on a college campus for simply pointing out media bias against conservatives and called a "racist" at a faculty meeting while defending voters who might be Republican. I have had to sit through DEI training for educators in which stressing "racial essentialism" was considered "correct practice." I was once proud to take a summer class in Boston until I realized the elite professors "teaching" me believed in using Herbert Marcuse's framework for "repressive tolerance."
Yet this is not the whole story.
Outside of my professional life, I tutor a student in middle school because I believe strongly in community service. I have nothing at all to do with setting the curriculum at this middle school. I am not a middle school teacher. In this scenario, I am simply an instrument of support who can help answer one kid's questions about homework. We normally discuss the things that interest a 12-year-old kid, along with the need for punctuation.
Yet I'm sure you can imagine my delight when this kid's homework last week dealt with the Cultural Revolution. This student is reading a book decrying the horrors of the Mao regime and totalitarian systems.
In a moment when Ivy League campuses are full of Hamas apologists yelling out slogans about genocide that they either don't understand or really mean--terrifying in either case--this little middle school where I volunteer part-time is teaching young Americans about how the Red Guard was once an instrument of terror in the not so distant past. The student with whom I work is learning to think through why identifying people per some group can be a very dangerous thing.
And that was just the student's English homework.
In Social Studies, the teacher is unfolding a unit on earlier Chinese history, which broadens understanding of the "olds" that the Red Guard was once intent on destroying.
I don't know if the kid I'm helping has teachers who are willfully coordinating their lesson plans or not, but I can tell you as a teacher myself that what I see is great scaffolding about a topic in human history that seems pertinent to know in today's world.
I'll say it again.
There are some good teachers who are doing good things in the public school system.
And that is encouraging.
Discussion (20)
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Yes, this is why it's lazy and counterproductive to say the whole system is no good and needs to be replaced. It's sad when conservatives advocate Red Guard-like solutions to governmental or educational abuses. Those people are probably just venting, but still, it uses up valuable mental energy that could be spent in better ways.
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No -we who object are not just venting. When a school has lost 30% of its students (from 240 to 175) in 6 years to homeschool or private school, not due to decline in school age population, (after having been in the State’s top 5% in standardized scores) and the administration will not address parents’ and taxpayers’ questions about concurrent changes in curriculum and management, it’s not lazy or counterproductive to seek major change. I reject the characterization as seeking Red-Guard solutions. There is however a very real lack of mental energy or seriousness in our local school board, as evidenced by unwillingness to consider any reform or modification of District policy or direction.
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All sorts of major changes are possible that are not red-guard solutions. If there are specific reforms that have been proposed, they are probably not red-guard solutions.
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Some of the homeschool families that we've known have done great. Others, not so much. The public schools here are good.
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We do not need to be--and should never become--like Mao's Red Guard, but it's completely legitimate to push hard for substantive reform in schools. I can completely understand why parents want a ton more accountability and real school choice from the public system for which they pay. There is a lot of real rot in the institutions that we ignore at our peril.
That said, this post is meant to be a word of encouragement. There are absolutely a lot of teachers who are on the side of parents per simply wanting to give kids a good education in their particular subjects.
My personal primary focus as an educator is to show my students the tools they need to think for themselves, even if I don't always like what they ultimately think. (I'm not in the business of creating worldviews, but if one wants to analyze Maoism, one needs to know about the millions of dead on which that ideology is built).
So though I've learned in some ways to detest this word per how it's been co-opted and turned into a political construct, teachers and parents can be good allies in the fight to get back to teaching while moving away from indoctrinating young minds.
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