Lessons from the Bad Kids by Viland Vonda;Turner Deborah;

Author:Viland, Vonda;Turner, Deborah;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated

Rob Beckwith

Rob Beckwith

Chapter 6

System Failure

When I first think of system failure, I picture a complex circuit board in a massive computer panel of lights and buzzers in a science fiction movie when something is going to go very badly for someone very soon. There are many types of systems, and all of them can fail. When these systems fail, something WILL go very badly for someone, very quickly. This pertains to the educational system, and most certainly, to the schools and classrooms.

Tell me if any of this might be true in any adults’ world

• You get fired because there was a coffee stain on a piece of paper at work.

• You get fired because your name was not on the right hand side of the page.

• You get fired because you turned in your work ten minutes late, and it was, therefore, NOT accepted.

• You were punished by your boss because you forgot your note from home.

• You were late, so your boss made you report to HR to document your tardiness, which made you an additional ten minutes late getting back to your department.

• You got fired because you misunderstood what your boss wanted, and he refused to repeat the directions.

• You got punished for being absent when you were ill.

• You got punished for having a bad day.

• Your pay was docked when you forgot to turn in your lesson plans/work, or your work was not complete at the precise minute it was due, so it was not accepted, and your pay was docked as a result.

• It is expected that you acquire all the knowledge you need to complete your project by someone lecturing at you for fifty minutes and then completing thirty practice problems. You can ask questions, but if you still don’t understand, it is YOUR problem to solve. The lecturer has imparted their wisdom one time, and that is all they are responsible to do.

These are some of the expectations of the current educational system. In this system with these rules, there will be failure; indeed, the system is set up to encourage failure. As adults, we do not hold ourselves to the same standard to which we hold students. We won’t fail if we don’t get our lesson plans/work in by 8:00 a.m. We are not punished for being absent when we are ill. The papers we turn in or turn back to students may indeed have a stain or two on them, and, yet, the work is still accepted.

It is right to set parameters for a classroom. Students, and indeed most human beings, are most comfortable knowing what the parameters are ahead of time. It is a system failure, however, if these parameters are so restrictive and so limiting that any human mistake is fraught with punishment and negative consequences.

Failing an assignment because it had a student name on the wrong side of the top of the page is a failure of the system. Being even later to class because the tardy policy says you have to go and report to another place to get the absence on record prior to returning to class is a failure of the system.

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