When expectations arent met, someone usually demands to know why. This goes for public education as well as politics, wars, marriage and raising children. Normally, it is someone up the organizational chart that demands to know why underlings under-perform. Thats why it came as such a surprise when 200 Totem Middle School students called principals and teachers to account.
The children walked out of school at 10:40 a.m. for an on-campus demonstration against increased fighting, alcohol, drugs, gang activity and disruptive behavior. Caught by surprise, district administrators said it was the first time they had heard of students demanding more discipline.
When superintendents take principals to the woodshed, it happens behind closed doors and out of public view. Same with principals disciplining teachers. They avoid airing dirty laundry to keep it from making the news. But turn the tables, let underlings take authorities to task and we read about it on page-one. As New York Sun editor John Bogart famously said, When a dog bites a man, that is not news, but if a man bites a dog, that is news. When children blow the whistle on a schools shortcomings, that is news.
Analysts of the Middle Schoolers demonstration should inspect a pair of factors that are every bit as important as school policy; expectations and student culture. To understand expectations, one has to get beyond curriculum and school calendars and into the murky issue of school culture. Because school programs may float or sink according to what children expect to do when inside schools, expectations cannot be left entirely to children to decide.
Throughout my career as a teacher I longed to hear a principal say to a student body, You have come here to work today. Your job is learning. If you do it well, you will graduate to become creative, productive and financially secure citizens living full lives. You wont need society to support you. Since this is your job-site and learning is your work, your job description calls for you to learn as much as you can. If you dont show up, if you dont show effort, if you dont perform or if you slow others down that is, if you blow your opportunity, you may be asked to leave. It is not our job to baby-sit you.
That message may be heard once reluctant learners no longer claim the lions share of educational energy but that would mean a serious adjustment to public school culture. Chronic disturbers will be registered into an alternative program. Habitual absentees, likewise. Until then, excellence in education will be rare so long as society expects schools to be daytime providers of safe care and comfort for learners and non-learners alike. The expectations for universal day-care and quality education cant be the same. They are different cultures. Once that is accepted, we move closer to understanding why schools sometimes dont meet our expectations for excellence.
When Totem Middle Schools students abandoned classrooms to demonstrate for a safe learning environment where education is the business of the day, they were acting out reasonable expectations. Fearful of bad actors and tired of time-wasters, 200 children effectively put the schools administrators on notice. Man bites dog.
If Totem Middle Schools teachers faced no one but dedicated students from homes that respected education, discipline and attendance problems would disappear. Bad-actors would be few. But what about the rest? With insufficient program for dealing with blocks of reluctant learners, bands of disenfranchised youngsters would roam malls and congregate at street corners. Thats not acceptable. What to do?
While our society warily watches children grow older, it lack tools to help them grow up. Regardless of age, schools and workplaces host a huge number of people who seem to be forever stuck in adolescence. Societies here and there have worked up Rites of Passage as a cure for that; One day a boy, the next a man with a new code of responsibility he cant dodge. We see rites of passage in the Jewish Bar Mitzvah, Latin American Quinceaneras, the Australian Aborigine walkabout and Native American vision quests.
Public education suffers when youngsters become trapped in prolonged adolescence. Their school years become a dark version of Peter Pans Never-Never Land, a perpetual adolescence that has no place in public school classrooms. Societys failure to come up with effective ways of lifting boys and girls out of adolescence and into adulthood leaves a door open to disruptive behavior and gangs. This is a school-culture issue more than an educational issue.
Teachers have expectations. They expect kids to attend class regularly but sometimes that runs headlong into parents expectations that regular attendance is optional; that its okay to take mid-week family ski days or pull sons from school for bird hunting. Sometimes there is no one to see children off to school in the morning. Spotty attendance, reluctance to learn and behavior problems leave marks on school culture.
Responsible parents expect teachers to capture childrens attention and motivate them to learn. After all, the taxes they pay provide fine schools equipped with the latest in educational technology. They expect a reasonable return on their investment in terms of well educated youngsters. This can happen where expectations arent torpedoed by negative aspects of school culture.
Children expect rules. They expect consequences from fighting or bullying. To run a first-class school, it is adults, not children who define and enforce rules that encourage an educational culture to thrive. Yet at Totem Middle School it was children, not adults, who said their expectations for student behavior werent being met.
School policy says the demonstrators must be disciplined. So be it, but I do hope that their penalties are accompanied by a pat on the back.

Comments may be addressed to: rgraef@verizon.net