“Those who control the access to the minds of children will set the agenda for the future of the nation and the future of the western world” …James Dobson, Focus on the Family
I got a message this morning from a teacher that took offense to my last discussion. I ask her did I say anything that wasn’t true? Well no, but you just don’t know how hard it is sometimes….She went on to tell me of some of the difficulties dealing with parents and administrators and school boards, curriculum committees, blah, blah, blah…..look for excuses and you will find plenty of them. Its not about you, it’s about the them, the children. …..A poor teacher complains, an average teacher explains, a good teacher teaches, a great teacher inspires.
I know it is a challenge, when I thought about going into teaching I realized at the time I was not emotionally mature enough to handle parents. I had had a run in with a parent in the child development lab over potty training during a class in developmental psychology. There I was trying to explain to the parent why he shouldn’t strike his child for not learning and explaining how he should be patient, about all the experts ideas on the subject, when kid is ready, he will learn. But the man just wasn’t getting it, I don’t know, maybe he couldn’t afford pampers. I lost my cool and wanted to beat the shit of this parent for trying to literally beat the shit out of his kid. I would never have lasted in the field, fired for slugging a parent or principal over principle. It takes a very special person to teach and I am going to try and explain why I think this is so.
It is the most important thing we can do today to make better tomorrows. Children are society’s most valuable asset, and in world of today, with both parents working outside the home, most of their values are learned in school, good or bad, its true. In many families the child spends more time with the teacher than his parents. On the week-ends and after school, television is charged with socializing our youth. Corrupting is more precise.
The teachers responsibility has never been greater, and to top that off, the class size determines how much time the teacher will spend with that individual child. I can see how easily it is to become overwhelmed, and who could blame them. But if you are doing something you love you will never work a day in your life. My belief teachers should be paid every bit as much as Doctors and lawyers and society should hold the same esteem for them. It really is that important.
Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish works are two of the best resources out today for parents and teachers to understand kids and their importance to society. I highly recommend them, both were students of Haim Ginott…… “I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. My personal approach creates a climate. My daily mood makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be the tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor. Hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.” In a preface to one of Haim’s books I found in my old school notes that made me realized how important it is to teach children to be human and not just fact parrots. This note was given to him by a school principal. She said:
“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness. Gas chambers build by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and killed by high school and college graduates. So I’m suspicious of education. My request is: help your students to be human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, or educated Eichmanns. Reading and writing and spelling and history and arithmetic are only important of they serve to make our students human.”
This is what scares the hell out of me when I see all the selfish apathy of the new materialistic social climate of today. Teachers of today have an obligation as human beings to pass on ethical and moral values, the value of a human life, even though it is not written in the employment contract. We know now what happens when we don’t teach ethics, the world has born witness to the results. Those children may be the adults that let you lie in a pool of your own waste as you lay waiting to die.
I mean really, nobody teaches you how to be a human being and what it means to be a human, and the dignity that it means when you say, “I am a human being.” Everyone assumes this is something you have, or should have gotten by osmosis. Well, it’s not working by osmosis! Parent are too busy out working to buy more stuff for ungrateful children that are taught from television they need this stuff in order to be happy. The responsibility falls to the teacher by default to make decent human beings out of our children. I wish this wasn’t so, but that is the way things stand today.
So dear teachers, if children are our most valuable natural resource, then you are our second. We must get back to the point again; and, this is going to shock a lot of people, and you are not going to like it, but I am going to risk it. I feel very strongly. We’ve got to risk again by saying that “I like me.” You cannot give anybody in this world what you do not have. And therefore you must concentrate on getting. You must become the most beautiful, sensitive, wondrous, magical, unique, fantastic person in the world to be able to have all of these things in order to give them away and share them. Think about it. If I don’t have joy I can only teach you despair. If I don’t have freedom, I can only put you in cages. But everything that I have I can give away. That’s the only reason for having it. But I have got to have it first. And so dedicate yourself to becoming the best teacher/parent/human the world has ever known. The world is depending on you, sincerely thank-you!! Recognition and rewards will be held at the eternal awards banquet, see Jesus for reservation conformation. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it…Proverbs, 22:6
keep fighting the good fight,
…………………..kosmicdebris……………………………….
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