…the horror of education … is ALWAYS met by ordinary folks doing extraordinary things.
It is Halloween Week. This is the 13th installment of this volume of the blog. These are two signs of mystic and dreadful portent.
EEk!
This past summer, I was lucky to take a vacation with one of my best friends through upstate New York. As we drove on our pilgrimage, we had hours in the car to speak about any and all kinds of topics. We are both educators and he is one of the few I can say is more veteran than I. We both have opinions about the work we do, both as individual professionals and as educators who are part of a broader professional community. We both have strong opinions.
My good friend has a much, much longer view of things than I do and he embraces salvific history as philosophy for his life in a way that I can only admire and love. But, in the short term, I am the more optimistic of us. I can, typically, find more immediate silver linings.
On the topic of education our short term and long term perspectives – our every perspective – seem aligned.
Modern education is broken and we are not sure it can be fixed.
The list of the challenges faced by educators is long, complex, and thorny.
- Students have changed.
- Parents are too involved.
- Parents are not involved enough.
- Teachers are not as good as they once were.
- Curriculum is far more complicated than ever.
- There are complexities around race.
- There are complexities around gender
- Funding is down.
- Confidence is down.
- Teachers are not respected.
- Cell phones and technology overall make the work impossible.
- Cultural values have shifted.
- There is a sharp generational divide between faculty and staff.
- Respect is missing from almost all stakeholders.
And on, and on, and on. This list is off the top of my cursor. Surely there are more issues and more of them are more difficult to solve.
The horror of education.
There is much here to force cursing of the darkness. There is much here to lament. There is much that is horrible.
This is year 34 for me. 34 years of this work. 34 years of this horror.
And I come back, excited, ready, smiling. I come back for more and more and more.
As does my good friend, and he’s been doing this longer than I.
To me, the horror of education is like the horror found in a good Stephen King story – the challenge of overcoming it is ALWAYS met by ordinary folks doing extraordinary things. Stephen King stories are scary, but they end, almost always, in hope.
Working in education can be scary but it is hope that inspires us to come back for more.
It is a shared hope.
It is a grounded hope.
It is a steadfast hope.
It may not solve the horror of education, but it certainly does not hurt.