"...the next time you turn on the TV and see yourself called 'overpaid'..."

If you haven't seen it already, please check out Matt Damon's impassioned defense of teachers at a Save Our Schools (SOS) rally.



To loud cheers, he says, "I don’t know where I would be today if my teachers’ job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test. If their very survival as teachers was based on whether I actually fell in love with the process of learning but rather if I could fill in the right bubble on a test."

Five Posts for the Price of One Click!

I've started five posts today. Each got deleted because I didn't think I could adequately address the subject in two paragraphs.

The first one drew attention to an opinion piece about shyness in the NYTimes: "Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic?"

The second pointed out one of my favorite columnists of late, Ta'Nehesi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic. He blogs about everything from Jane Austen to immigration. And his posts have some of the most intelligent comments you'll find on the web.

The third was on the cheating scandal in Atlanta's Public Schools. The governor's report showed nearly 180 teachers engaged in some kind of cheating on standardized tests, from changing students' answers to facilitating cheating by giving students unauthorized assistance. Think Progress reports:

While uncovering this widespread cheating, the report also noted that these abuses were facilitated by a “culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation” that faced APS teachers and administrators, who were pressured to raise test scores and feared for their jobs if they protested these policies or even reported cheating. One excerpt from the report found that a principal forced a teacher under a table during a meeting because her students’ test scores were deemed unsatisfactory.

The fourth was on a revelation about President Obama's father:

Before Barack Obama was born, his parents may have considered putting him up for adoption, according to documents obtained by a reporter for The Boston Globe.

Mr. Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., told immigration officials that Ann Dunham, whom he had recently married, would make “arrangements with the Salvation Army to give the baby away,” one document said. [Obama, Sr., had to reapply for his Visa yearly].

The article in the New York Times indicated that President Obama had not previously known about his father's statement. I just imagine the President, worried about the job numbers, worried about Libya and debt ceiling negotiations, coming across this information. When does he have time to process it? To think about it? How does this fit in his narrative about his father? His own life?

I'm trying to remember the fifth post. That was going to be the awesome one, I'm sure. The most interesting and original.

I continue to write and revise and add details to my made-up story. I borrowed another writing book from the library, "The Writer's Digest Handbook of Novel Writing." It is a collection of pieces that had been written for "The Writer's Digest," with contributions from popular authors like Orson Scott Card, Lawrence Block, and Tom Clancy. They give advice on everything from dialogue and plotting to revision and selecting genre. David Groff wrote a chapter, "The Ten Essentials of Popular Fiction," and discussed the characteristics of a successful commercial ("popular") novel. I figured my own work would never cross over into the commercial category (I consider it "literary fiction," that is, "unpopular"), and Groff's words supported my assumption:

While this may surprise you, commercial fiction is always morally conservative. It doesn't matter how many Dirks bed how many Ambers, or how many KGB agents kill off innocent Berliners on the way to find CIA operative Tim Sheahan. A literary novel may, like a piece of contemporary music, be atonal -- and leave the reader feeling discord; but in a commercial novel the narrative ends on the tonic note, with balance restored and order reigning. The good doctor marries the actress, even though she has had to sleep with half of the Screen Actors Guild. The renegade Miami cop manages to blow up the drug smuggler's trawler before it docks in Tampa. In every case, the values and balance of the civilization are reaffirmed, at least temporarily.

He argues that works of popular fiction "are by nature optimistic." I don't know that I can do that. I'm generally an optimistic person, I suppose, thinking the best of people, often against my better judgment. But I'm also very guarded. Very careful and even tentative at times. And perhaps subconsciously, I'm using my novel to show that that "guardedness" is warranted. Life is complicated and messy, and I couldn't write with honesty by pretending otherwise.

The Value of Education

Researchers from NYU

followed the progress of several thousand students in more than two dozen diverse four-year colleges and universities. [They] found that large numbers of the students were making their way through college with minimal exposure to rigorous coursework, only a modest investment of effort and little or no meaningful improvement in skills like writing and reasoning.

They point out that resources at college are increasingly directed toward fitness centers and sports complexes, not on academics. They also argue that

[t]he authority of educators has diminished, and students are increasingly thought of, by themselves and their colleges, as “clients” or “consumers.” When 18-year-olds are emboldened to see themselves in this manner, many look for ways to attain an educational credential effortlessly and comfortably. And they are catered to accordingly. The customer is always right.

Who's to blame, here? It's easy to point fingers at the students. After all, it is their responsibility to take advantage of their classes and instructors, to make their learning meaningful. While I often questioned my own skills as a teacher, I reminded myself that students will get out of a class what they put into it: I can't open up a student's head and deposit knowledge into it. And I regret that I didn't make the most of my own undergraduate experience: while my grades were good, I rarely put 100% into my studies. If I could get away with not reading the text, I would. But then I might have missed out on watching "Pulp Fiction" at 4am, or traipsing across campus at midnight for Taco Bell.

There was never a question of whether I would go to college, and I didn't think twice about the price of tuition, or student loans, or choosing a practical major. The four years I spent there would help me transition from a shy little girl to a more confident person with a degree. I know without a doubt that my learning there was meaningful and essential.

But considering the rise of for-profit colleges and the increase of high school graduates going on to college (and taking out huge loans to pay for it), the lack of value suggested by the NYU researchers should give all of us pause.

Next Quarter

My last classes meet on Thursday. Every once in a while I catch myself thinking, Oh next quarter I'll... or I should hang on to this! I can share it with... And the feeling is bittersweet when I realize that, no, next quarter I won't be teaching.

There is so much that I'll miss about it and probably foremost is, strangely, the accountability: I have to be prepared, I have to know my material, and I have to assess students fairly. I get to tell stories and listen to theirs. For twelve hours each week, I have a captive audience. This has been both exhilarating and daunting.

I'll return to teaching someday, whether as an adjunct in a community college or university or as a leader for an informal writing group of five-year-olds or fifty-year-olds.