What a pleasure and delight to see on KAKE 10 news last night that dear Coach Lollar has been sacked. One worthless instructor out the window, 9 million more to go. Unfortunately, I cannot presume the wisdom of the Derby school board involved noticing that Mr. Ladida most of the time could not even pronounce the name of the subject he was teaching. He threatened to fail a certain oboeist for writing that a question about who won the football game last night on a test about Africa’s geography was inappropriate.
No, because, as always in Derby, schools are not institutions of learning, but the burgeoning grounds for star athletes who have to waste all their time going to things called “classes.” Actually, by the frequent visitors to Lollar’s classroom, there wasn’t much of that, even.
I would like to presume, however, that it had something to do with those leery glances.
The parents, of course, are very angry about Lollar getting kicked in the boots. He’s such a great basketball coach! And how will my boy’s ego get over-inflated now, without an ego-inflated coach to guide him?! Derby’s reputation for excellence in basketball is ruined! It is not an unimportant observation that all who spoke in defiance of the decision were worried about what would happen to the team. Not one spoke about his ability as a teacher or aptitude for social studies.
I’m sure he was an example of a useless secondary school aparatchik.
But you are too hard on educators in general.
Have you any notion of how difficult it is to deal with the apathy you describe as infusing this instructor as the norm both inside and outside the institution? Serious teachers who actually give a damn, innovative teachers who go beyond merely entertaining their classes (note how few news stories about “excellent” teachers quote the students as saying “She Really made me think”) are routinely ridiculed, misunderstood, drummed out of the business by sheer neglect or downright hostility. In the world of “no child left behind rhetoric” and football hero reality, teachers who care for their subjects are not supported by their peers, the parents, nor the administration.
The surprise, given the overall lack of interest in learning evinced by the population of this great nation of ours, is that fewer teachers don’t shoot automatic weapons at their students and their students’ parents, not vice-versa.
Sounds like he was accurately preparing his students for the real world, where music is for stealing and sports is for economic success. Why is John Madden, a heavyset late-middle-aged or “old” white man, more popular than Jesus among ghetto-fabulous African-American males? Because he got his name connected to (quality, for what they are) video games and rakes in the dough like so many others connected to the sports economy. See Norma Perfect’s poem above for more on sports heroes. Music is too individual, too suspectible to taste. You either like sports or you don’t. Sure, some people like hockey and some like football, and those un-Amer-i-by-God-i-cans like soccer but have the nerve to call it football. That’s a regional thing more than anything else.
Even our potential leaders recognize this. Kinky Friedman understands the Texas voter perfectly, taking the only win-win position possible, when explaining his platform in running for TX governor: “I am not pro-life, I am not pro-choice, I am pro football.” (http://www.kinkyfriedman.com/raceguv.html)
I am hard-nosed towards educators probably because I tend to seek knowledge adamently and can become susceptible to the methods of those who impart it. If I am going to put myself in a position of receiving knowledge, I want to be sure that the opinions and personal quirks that get jumbled up with the information and the modes of perception have some value.
Educators, especially in a formal school setting, are in a position of tremendous power. This has nothing to do with monetary compensation. On the psychological level there is the potential to change the way a pupil processes, interprets, and makes meaning of information.
Excellent instructors (and despite my high standards, I do know some) understand this and have developed ways to reveal their knowledge generously but with care to their own biases. This is why I seriously doubt that those who don’t like teaching or their subject can really enrich a student’s sphere of knowledge.
I’m sorry about the apathetic students, but there is not only apathy in academia. Teachers have a duty to those who want to learn from them.