ONE WOULD think Barack Obama had rarely been in American schools, real American schools, by the misty-eyed romanticism he attaches to them. This fervor was on display again in his jobs speech last night. There is nothing, in Obama’s eyes, that a school fully staffed by the graduates of our brainless, monopolistic educational certification institutions can’t do to lift human potential.

Following the messianic quest for an optimally schooled populace through its torturous contradictions, Obama has proposed creating construction jobs by fixing 35,000 school buildings. He also insists we employ more teachers – now. This is his idea of getting America back to work.

Now we know Obama visits schools all the time. He is frequently photographed in schools, sitting in cinderblock holding cells with first- or fifth-graders, whose innocence sheds its glory on him.

I am convinced, however, he hasn’t the slightest idea what goes on in schools.

A friend of mine works in a large city high school teaching Algebra I to ninth graders. I spoke to him last week on the verge of his return. “I hate it,” he said, the look on his face suggesting real physical misery. “I hate it so much.”

The reason why this man hates his job is that he is required to teach Algebra I to students who have not mastered multiplication and division and for whom the concept of a negative number is profoundly confusing. The concept of a variable is even more difficult and my friend’s expression sickened again as he tried to explain to me what it is like to explain to them what x or s means when it occurs in a mathematical equation. His best student last year asked him at the beginning of the year, “Mr. S., I should know this but could you explain to me how to divide 90 by two?”

She was his best student because she actually wanted to learn, while most others didn’t. And who can blame them? Leaving aside the atmosphere of the school, its lack of discipline, the nearly complete indifference of parents and the profound social chaos of the students’ neighborhoods, these students are in over their heads.

Mr. S. would not mind teaching them multiplication and division. He would perhaps capture the attention of more of them and he certainly would enjoy his job more. But he has not been hired to do that. He has been hired to teach Algebra I and must show progress.

This school dooms its students rather than making them the sharp global competitors Obama envisions every time he mentions a classroom. They will fall short of their already limited potential and that will be true even if a thousand construction workers converge on their building and even if every student is given a laptop.

It dooms them for the simple reason that our government will not acknowledge racial differences. Our education system is run by those who believe in the potential of the school, rather than of the real human being. My friend’s school is mostly black and most of the students will never master Algebra II, let alone Algebra I. The progression of math courses is the same as in schools five miles away in the suburbs: Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and Pre-Calculus.

What this school needs is something Obama and his proposals can never provide and that is a conviction that schools can only do so much.

                                           — Comments —

Melissa writes:

Obama can’t be too romantic about public schools considering his own children do not attend them. It’s all an act. For his own children only the best will do.

Pan Dora writes:

I disagree with Melissa’s view that he doesn’t romanticize public education. He certainly does, as long as it’s other people’s children who attend the nation’s public schools. It is also an easy thing to romanticize that which one views from far away, or from a quick photo op.

He will also make sure the child your friend spoke of (the one who wanted to learn) will not get a chance to attend a better school by encouraging a voucher system. After all, someone has to appease the teacher’s unions to keep his donations rolling in. Just so long as it is the children in your friend’s class that are the cannon fodder and not President Obama’s.

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