Strike

My thoughts have been swirling lately. Murders in Libya. Strike in Chicago. The High Holidays. First week of Hebrew School. And The Little Jewess had to go to the ER. (She's fine now.)

Issues big and small, and I don't see anything that ties them together. I guess I should start with the big ones, and there's plenty been written by Humanists about the events in Libya and Egypt this week, so I'm going to start with Chicago.

For those who don't know, Mr. Jewess is a Public School Teacher. My parents were also Public School Teachers and I was one briefly. I just want to make my biases totally clear here. But I also think that Unions are generally fighting the Humanist fight.

Unions have brought us minimum wage, weekends, Family Leave, sick time and safe working conditions. They ended child labor and sweatshops. And in this case, the Chicago Teachers Union is fighting not just for a fair wage for professionals with Master's Degrees, but also for reasonable class sizes, safe, clean schools and textbooks available on the first day of school. (Sorry--that last was one of the "concessions" they won from the City before the strike began.

Imagine trying to teach in a 100 degree classroom with a leaky roof and no textbooks. Imagine 45 kids who may or may not have a safe place to sleep, who may or may not have had breakfast, who may or may not have a quiet place to do homework or any books in their houses. Forty-five. And then on top of that, you have a City that is looking to shut down any school it can to privatize it, and your school will only stay open if your kids do well on some test. How many of these children have seen a relative die violently? How many have lost a parent to drug addiction? How many spent time fending for themselves before a relative found them and enrolled them in school? (I take these examples from my own experience teaching in New York City, but I expect they translate to other cities. In any case, they're real examples.)

You want to bond with these children, give them the love that they need to succeed, give them the little bit of attention they need to feel good at something so that they have the strength to push through to learn the things that are hard, but there are forty-five of them and if they don't pass this test your job will be gone, your school will be closed and then what?

And so you strike. You strike for the rights of the children to have a decent place to learn and a shot at success.

You can call the teachers greedy if you want. I can't. I've been there.

I stand with the Chicago Teacher's Union.

Another kind of homework

Last week, in my capacity as a Religious School teacher, I went to a conference on teaching children with learning disabilities. The keynote speaker was Jonathan Mooney, and each attendee was given a copy of his latest book, The Short Bus. Mooney was such a compelling speaker that I decided his book would be my next read.

The Short Bus is a memoir about a trip Mooney took around the country, driving a "short bus" emblematic of the buses that drive Special Ed students to school, and visiting children and adults who are labeled with various learning disabilities. Interspersed with that story are Mooney's reflections on his own childhood and school experiences.

The central question of Mooney's discourse is whether labeling children helps or hurts them, whether school is adequately preparing kids for life, and whether the benefits these kids get from school is worth the price they pay for dealing with the labels. It struck me that this is at heart a Humanist question.

What do we owe our children?

Humanism would dictate that we owe them all an equal opportunity at life. I suppose that is the heart of the education debate in this country. What gives a child that opportunity? For now, I will put aside issues like poverty (which is the most important educational issue of our time) because I want to react to Mooney's book. The question then is, do we need to develop each child's strengths, whatever they may be, or do we need to teach them all the same thing?

I have difficulty answering this question. On the one hand, it seems ideal to give each child confidence and expertise in his or her greatest strengths. But I am parenting an 8-year-old. I know some of her strengths: swimming, art, music, geography and communication. But what strengths does she have that haven't yet been discovered because she hasn't yet been exposed to them? And what strengths are yet to develop? And are they really strengths, or is she just developing in these areas ahead of her peers? Are her weaknesses (math, self-monitoring, gym) developmental, essential, or because she hasn't yet found the best way to learn those things? It's very hard to tell.

So I have to advocate for a generalist approach to elementary education. However, I am very glad that The Little Jewess is in a Montessori school. Montessori teaches each child individually, which means TLJ can be ahead of her peers in reading while receiving remedial help in math. She's also learning to monitor her own time and take a strategic approach to resolving differences with other children.

It's clear to me that nobody should be dehumanized in the way that the people in Mooney's book describe. But I'm not sure what the solution might be.

I look forward to reading the rest of The Short Bus to find out what ideas Mooney has.