Let Not Many Be Teachers, Or Coaches

                            Let Not Many Be Teachers, Or Coaches

               Published in Marietta Daily Journal June 4, 2017

            My mind is on our teachers.  Most of them wound up their year’s work in the last week or two.  Believe me, their minds and bodies are still numb.  They don’t have and never did have three months off, no matter what their school system calendar may have said.

            Teaching is draining work.  Teachers are constantly giving.  Not just knowledge, but energy, emotions, and every ounce of creativity they possess.  The emotional part gets more intense by the year.  Weakened homes have made sure of that.

            I have the deepest respect for the teachers I’ve worked with for the past half-century.  I can’t recall over four or five high school teachers that I would classify as bad teachers or bad people.  From the five colleges I have taught in, I’m thinking the numbers are about the same.

            Teachers of small children particularly need our support.  We all know how demanding children can be; however, teachers of younger children tell me that the number of demanding children is decreasing because so many children come to school sad, unresponsive, and disengaged.

            Here’s something taxpaying citizens need to know, especially my conservative friends.  We can complain about failing schools all we want, but failing schools are often the result of failing homes.  There are many children, and teenagers as well, who don’t like to leave school when the day is over, all because of the help, support, and love they get from their teachers.  First-year teachers learn fast why students (even seventeen-year-olds) cling to them.  There’s little help and little clinging at home.

            I’ve no doubt that many teachers occasionally leave school deeply troubled because of student needs that are not academic or intellectual.  The school’s chief task is (or should be) to provide knowledge by teaching academic content, and to build character by teaching right and wrong, particularly regarding stealing, cheating, and respecting others.  Nowadays students come with other needs as well.

            Today schools are feeding students, clothing them, and providing therapy of all stripes.  “Grief counseling” is particularly widespread, an offering which is often simply over-done.  It teaches students to wallow in grief instead of how to interpret and appropriate it.

            Those who claim schools have moved from a knowledge-based institution to a feelings-based one are largely correct.  We are indeed one nation under therapy; however, schools are not an entity that is disconnected from the larger culture.  Schools are a reflection of the culture.  What many critics don’t understand is that teachers must teach whoever enters the building.  And a very large percentage of those who enter the building come from brokenness, fighting parents, and absentee fathers.  Not all of these are from poverty-stricken homes.

            .  Failing homes are not the fault of children or teens, but of parents.  If teachers must spend time training students on matters that parents didn’t attend to (discipline, social skills, need of encouragement), how can we blame teachers or schools for having to do what should have already been done?   How can education’s critics not understand that attending to what has not been attended to takes time from academic content?

            There is a Biblical injunction that reads, “Let not many be teachers.”  It refers to teachers of scripture, but it reminds me that schools need teachers who truly desire to teach.  Our coaches are teachers, too, and some of the best.  Few realize the positive impact that coaches have on students, even students whom they don’t teach or coach.  Male coaches are still symbols of masculinity, strength, discipline, and cheer.  The best influence on high school girls is often male coaches; however, both male and female coaches too often go unheralded.  I say may their tribe increase.

            Education critics should back up and become social (hearth and home) critics.  And then become activists, working with poor families, or taking a next door teen to church or synagogue. Such a step back would help produce a better child or teen before he or she enters the school building.

 Schools are no doubt doing some things wrong.  I wish schools would cut some of the therapy and teach students to “cowboy up.”  Education’s therapeutic self-absorption, however, didn’t start in the schools.  A nation’s schools are downstream from its culture.

The “man for all seasons,” renaissance figure Sir Thomas More, said to young Richard Rich, “Why not be a teacher?  You’d be a fine one, perhaps a great one.”  Rich answered, “And if I were, who would know it?”

“You, your pupils, friends, God.  Not a bad public, that.”

Wish every teacher you know a good summer.  We need them back.

Roger Hines

5/31/17