I have a sense of humor, but I misplaced it after reading this morning’s paper. A local-color writer, Luke Wilson, gave me an unexpected -- and probably unintentional -- insight into some of this district’s problems. He calls his school days a "vicious cycle of endless classes."
In a feeble attempt at sweet nostalgia, Wilson writes a column that ends up sending a wrong-headed message about the value of education to local families and the students who are on the brink of starting fall classes in a high school that earned a “D” from the Florida Department of Education: “We were not only held against our will for 12 years, but were fed mostly useless information, right along with cafeteria food,” writes the man who never left Arcadia (from what I can glean from his columns) and is proud of it.
For the rest of the column, Luke Wilson doesn’t merely poke fun at the “useless” lessons he “suffered” in English grammar, mathematical reasoning, physical education and biology. He ends up saying that the shoe-shine box he made in shop was “as important as anything I learned.” He claims it taught him that if you don’t get good grades ... you may be building one of these things to make a living with on the street corner.”
Since Wilson is a local fellow, I zipped over to the high school’s web page to see if he had listed himself with one of the graduation-year groups. It was there that I stumbled on something just as alarming than his limp attempt.
DeSoto High uses a Google map to show its location, and the balloon that pops up offers “3 reviews” that expand when you use your brower’s cursor to activate the link. The first student-written review says DHS is fun and has fewer cliques than expected. Here are the other two:
Zuppa isn't my real name. I want to speak without revenge from some teacher. They play favoriets, change grades for the pretty white girls, and ignore the poor kids. We da losers so why try to help us? I and my friends are really discouraged by the attitude that if your not in, then your OUT, OUT, I want to go to college and I screwed up last year. So theres no redemption for the black man in this skool. I heard the school got a D grade from the government and my english teacher said it was my fault. Sure theres sports but thats for the chosen few. Rescue me like the song sez.
SOme of the teachers are great and really... passionate about their subjects. Others so so new and uneffective. Overall, it is a friendly school but there is one major problem. Most of the teachers and falculty play favoritism.
Between Wilson’s headliner about his useless education, and the state DOE’s official evaluation based on reading scores (80 percent of DHS students aren’t reading on grade level), and the school board and superintendent’s apparent willful ignorance of all things surrounding these conditions –- well, I just made up my mind. I’m going to home-school my kids.
The ocular proof lies ---->
(Click on the image to enlarge it.)
After reading this post, my first reaction was to wonder why our local “rag” accepted this squib for publication. My second reaction was to get the paper and read the article. Do not tell anyone that I spent 75 cents for this experience.
ReplyDeleteI’m certainly not playing the devil’s advocate but I do feel this to be a poorly camouflaged critique of our school system – gallows humor, if you will. Mr. Wilson quotes his English teacher at his 30th high school class reunion as saying “I don’t know why we even diagrammed those sentences. That was stupid.” Obviously, this is a teacher who either didn’t comprehend what they were doing or didn’t care (or both). That was 30 years ago. (By the way, do you think that teacher was the emperor? After all, Mr. Cline was an English teacher.)
It is not any better now. A classic example of this can be found in the minutes of the emperor’s staged performance on August 14, 2007:
“Nicole Adams, a former student and graduate of DeSoto County schools, is passionate about this community … Mrs. Adams feels that education takes on more forms than what can be taken out of a book. Roots are what make us who we are and without roots, there are not wings. Mrs. Adams credits Superintendent Cline for giving the students of this community the roots that are needed for them to gain their wings.”
Aside from this acolyte’s reverential deference to the emperor, I was awestruck by her obvious inability to craft a simple, logical metaphor. Without being disrespectful, roots are in the plant kingdom and wings are in the animal kingdom and roots do not give rise to wings!
Perhaps like Mr. Wilson she gleaned very little from our school system.
And so, as I mentioned previously, things don’t look much better now. Mr. Wilson found schooling useless 30 years ago and by way of this article, is suggesting that our schools are still useless. That’s my take on it. But even if you disagree with my interpretation, don’t worry – 80 percent of the high school students can’t read it anyway!
Mickey the Dunce