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Editor, News-Register:
National Public Radio (NPR) broadcast a story recently about a national teaching shortage in America's public schools. NPR cited Covid-19 as the primary reason for this shortage, but as a substitute teacher in several districts over the past 10 years, I know the real reason first hand; a total loss of control in our classrooms. NPR will not broach this issue, for the same reason John Kennedy hesitated to introduce educational legislation in 1962, because policymakers and politicians warned President Kennedy that public education was a political snake pit!
After I spent a decade in government as a homeland security operations officer, U.S. Army contractor, and at Lockheed Martin's Space Imaging satellite imagery division, I returned to graduate school in 2009 to become a teacher. Following graduation, my experiences exposed me to the most disturbing "learning environments" of my entire life. I saw several students literally threaten teachers to their face, even filming teachers on cell phones while provoking them, or texting parents to report what a teacher said to see if they could get the teacher in trouble. Really.
Teachers in some schools had to deal with discipline on an almost minute-by-minute basis, while in other schools students slept, or played on cell phones, while teachers droned through PowerPoint lesson plans. After I was threatened by two male students, a Chemistry teacher down the hall was beaten so badly he had to be hospitalized. I had been warned during in-processing that I would likely experience a physical assault, but was nonetheless told never to lay a hand on a student! Current state laws, and the cost of lawsuits to schools, is why this is allowed to go on.
As an American who is the product of our public, private, and parochial schools, I know what a good education looks like, and I find it appalling that American children are permitted to wallow in apathy and ignorance -- or threaten violence against a teacher, to their face, in the classroom. My recent experiences in two rural schools confirmed that this situation is not confined to inner-city schools. We are facing a crisis, in my opinion, of losing an entire generation of American youth at a time when our world is demanding globally competitive graduates from our schools.
Education in America is in serious trouble, and no amount of standards-based tests will save it from systemic failure if our teachers and administrators cannot clean house, and do their jobs, in a safe and disciplined learning environment. If petulant punks, and physical intimidation, have more power than professional educators in the classroom, who would want to teach? And what does it matter if we won the fight for civil rights, against the Klan, and nightriders, and lynch mobs, if we then turn around and don't help inner-city kids?
I have also taught in excellent public schools, with students who had the drive and determination to get into Ivy League colleges. Those schools only exist because the parents in those districts are highly educated professionals who elect the school boards, which hire administrators who demand the highest standards of excellence in the classroom. Students with serious discipline problems are prosecuted and sent packing to correctional facilities, where they can receive all the attention they need -- from prison guards -- so that good kids may have a chance to learn in safety.
If anyone doubts what I have just said, based upon years of first-hand experience in three states, simply look at recent news items regarding the shining example of education we exhibit in our nation's capital. Three years ago the Washington, D.C. public school system was found guilty of graduating students who had not shown up for one-third of the required days at school. They were graduating as dysfunctional illiterates into a life of poverty, crime, addiction or prostitution.
Of course, you can choose to discount everything I just said, and believe NPR instead, since the politics of the people behind NPR do not condone conservative values like corporal punishment, or even allowing a parent to physically discipline their kid; like the California alderman who was arrested and prosecuted for spanking his 7-year-old daughter! Perhaps it's just a coincidence that young people today choose to shoot up supermarkets, grade schools, and a 4th of July parade to show the world how special they are, and how no one can tell them what to do.
If Americans sincerely want their children to succeed in life, then lobby for federal legislation that protects teachers, that bans cell phones in class, that sends deviates to juvenile detention facilities, and that brings back corporal punishment. I suspect if someone, somewhere, does not do something very soon we will witness a mob of malcontents descend on a downtown, and start a fire that burns the country down. Our teachers and police can no longer be silenced, or blamed, by politically correct politicians for systemic failures in society. The laws must be changed.
Joseph M. Mazgaj
Substitute Teacher
Pittsburgh