Teachers Losing Ability To Control Classroom
[February 10th] - It's stories like this that make me question if I really want to be a teacher.
Larry Neace has been a teacher in Gwinett County, Georgia for 23 years. He is loved by his students. A physics teacher, he is called "doc" by his students. What happened to Neace is every teacher's nightmare.
Neace handed out a work assignment with twenty minutes remaining in class and told the students to begin work on it -- it was a class project. Twenty-one students broken into groups and began to answer the questions that dealt with astronomy. The problem was that there were twenty-two students in the class. One young man, a star football player, put his head down and promptly went to sleep. He turned it in the next day, expecting to receive full credit.
He was given a "zero."
When the school year began, he had all the students sign the class syllabus, the same one he's been using for ten years. It specifices that part of the student's grade was based on class participation. Everyone in Mr. Neace's class understood that. So did the slumbering linebacker. When the boy complained to his teacher, he was reminded of the class rule and told the zero stood. The next day the parents were complaining, demanding that the grade be changed, that sleeping in class should have no effect on their child's grade.
Here's the part that scares teachers. The principal agreed. So did the school board. The school district has a rule that specifies that a student's grade cannot be reduced or harmed in any way because of "disciplinary" circumstances. They told the teacher to change the grade and he refused. He was fired. His students signed petititions and staged sit-ins. It all went for naught.
This is the new way of teaching where students' grades reflect 100% their actual school work. There were many times when I was young and in school that I received a "zero" because of my attitude and actions. And boy, did I learn from those times. The fear of failure made me "sit up and pay attention." Because I understood that my actions could affect my grade, I did my best to act in a manner that my teacher wanted. Oh sure, most of the time I didn't like it. But I learned a valuable lesson. I understood that their would be times in my life when I had to act and react in a manner that was foreign to my wishes.
Progressive principals and superintendents are teaching today's students that they can use profanity, sleep in class, wear inappropriate clothing and generally wreak havoc in the classroom and still pass the class and graduate from high school. Sure, there are mechanisms in place to punish this type of bad behavior, but sympathetic administrators give the student a "wink and a nod" and send them back to class.
Teachers have seen still another tool in their arsenal taken from them. They are required to teach the children but now have no say in their developing into adults. "Just get 'em to pass the test" is what they're being told.
And that's such a shame.
