Koko and Robin dream
So, I had this great dream last night. I dreamed Robin Williams was talking to me, only I was Koko the gorilla. (Dreams are weird, man. What can I say?)
We, Robin and I, re-wrote a skit from the 1998 movie Good Will Hunting. Our dreamy, “Mock Monologue” from the 1998 Movie Good Will Hunting. Staring Mr. Robin Williams. Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Minnie Driver.
(And Scene.)
So, why do you think I should go back to work for the NAEP? (Go back to teaching)
New charter schools, continued chaos, high demand, low pay and lower self-esteem.
90% or approx. million American students attend public schools. The NAEP’s (national assessment for educational progress) 28 board members are in head of the Nation’s Report Card.
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S: the question isn’t why should you go back into teaching. The question is why shouldn’t you?
I: Why shouldn't I go back into the (NAEP) classroom? That's a tough one but I’ll give it a shot.
Say I go back into the classroom and I get handed an AP curriculum, 150 students, and a rigorous standardized test to chaperone.
Maybe I stick to the curriculum and maybe I help students get an “extremely qualified” percentage on the exam. I get a teacher appreciation slap on the neck for a job well done.
But maybe that score helps a few students get into a top ranked college. Say, in the NorthEast. They end up with a 15% interest rate on a $100,000 lean it takes em 30 years to pay off. My students, along with 46 million other students, get blamed for a national debt crisis.
Now the policy makers and profiteers are in a pissing contest about who’s going to pay for the $1.7 Trillion student debt; a debt (NAEP, and others) orchestrated and financially profited from in the first place. They don’t give a shit about my students because their subsidies/ profit margins paid for their kids private education, just like their trust funds got them out of public schools too.
It’ll be my students who can't get a job with their degree while still paying off student debt, living back at home with mom and dad; riddled with both depression and high anxiety. No health care working at a fast food joint across the street from their old high school.
Meanwhile, my students realized the purpose of “cells and bells” schooling was to coerce and confuse children into obedience through censorship in a quasi-incarceration institution specifically built for their subjugation.
I figure if we recruit a Sixth grade student as an indentured servant; give em years to learn trades and skills from master apprentices; acquire genuine knowledge about personal finance; red Howard Zinn’s History of the United States; travel the world; pursue a personal passion with principled purpose instead of impersonating business management portrayals of unattainable and nonexistent, nonsense lies propagated in the classroom- Heck
They could make me an uberwensch! (Dream got weird here. ???????)
So what do I think?
I’m holding out for something better.
(End Scene.)