Boredom?

From the first page of the prologue, Gatto gets me going. I used to just go OFF when a kid would say he/she was 'bored.' I just couldn't stand it. HOW can you possibly, ever, be bored? I have to be careful not to react when I hear it now because it soon becomes a 'button' the kids discover they can push.

I had a fearsome 8th grade English teacher at Arroyo Seco named Olive Burns. She kept us on our toes with various readings and lots of writing but my eyes really opened the day one of my classmates said he was "bored" by something we were reading. "It's boring," he said. I swear ol' Mrs. Burns was going to pop a vein.

"BORED? BORED? If you are BORED young man then something is missing within yourself!" Most of us didn't exactly know what she meant at the time, but it resonates now. Gatto tells us his grandfather felt the same way!

I spent the first five years of my life living with my grandparents. There was no television - only books, a yard, a garage, a basement, and lots of music - records, show soundtracks, an organ, and a piano. There were no kids my age. So, I played alone. This was a habit I kept up throughout the years and I never minded being alone. I was never, ever, ever bored. Voracious reading also kept me occupied. And my stories - I wrote lots of stories.

Gatto reports that his students told him they were bored. They thought school was stupid. They hate the work. Well.... sheesh. What to say to that without knowing what they were supposed to be doing and what kinds of kids are we talking about? Thoughtful kids? Kids who persevere? Or kids with the attention span of gnat colony? Hard to say. Since he eventually ended up doing something positive with these kids, I will err on the side of the kids here.

Then he talks about bored teachers. THAT just fries me. Leave the profession and go do something truly boring - like working in a factory.

Gatto also talks about schooling vs education. Two very different concepts. Schooling 'trains.' Schooling brings about conformity and domestication. These are not wholly bad things. But, the word education comes from the Latin educare (ed-u-car-eh), which means to set oneself free, to liberate, to separate from ignorance. To seek an education is to learn how to think. Education gives men and women the tools they need to transform their world. How powerful is THAT?

It is the difference between 'schooling' in Nazi Germany and 'education' in a democratic society.

Allow me to go off on a tangent that really illustrates this point. Paolo Freire was a brilliant Brazilian educator determined to give a voice to the disenfranchised peasants who made up 90% of that country's population in the early 1960s. He taught them to read. (Well, not ALL of them.) Then he taught them to read their constitution. For all of his hard work, the Brazilian government "invited" him to leave Brazil in 1964. He lived in exile for many years, eventually teaching at Harvard and other Ivy League schools in the U.S. One of his American counterparts was a man by the name of Myles Horton. You may not recognize the name, but you will recognize what he founded: His school, Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, taught Rosa Parks to read. It educated the men and women who founded the Student-Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center. SNCC spawned a name you might recall - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Horton taught a generation of poor coal miners to read and helped them found a union. For his trouble, he was arrested - over and over again. "They accused me of learning things and then going back and teaching them," he wrote later. "They were right - that was exactly what I was doing." This was America before the civil rights movement.

Gatto talks about the "best qualities of youthfulness - curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight" and I can't help but think about many of the kids I see from day to day. DO they have these qualities? Because frankly, when I observe them huddled around the campus or playing with their video games in the lobby on a gorgeous, sunny day, I sense..... boredom. I sense a lack of motivation. I sense a lack of purpose, interest, or passion. I see the attention spans and desire for instant gratification that the television and video game revolution has wrought. Watch a kid's eyes when he/she reads: They are moving and full of life. Watch their eyes when they are watching television or interacting with the DS or other hand-held electronic device. They are devoid of life, expression.... intelligence!

What if these kids became interested in something else? How about learning? Life? Their communities? The country? The world? What if we could spark curiosity and then.......they CHOOSE to become educated?

There is much more in this prologue but I don't want to hog all the good topics.

:-)K

Weapons of Mass Instruction~

To my left you will see a nice picture of the book we are going to discuss, Weapons of Mass Instruction, by John Taylor Gatto. I usually take pictures of books against the tan carpet in my home office, but the blue color of the classroom mailbox was irresistible. I love color and contrast. If I wasn't a teacher or a veterinarian or a forensic psychiatrist, I would have been a designer. I love DIY Network, HGTV, and stores like Home Goods.

The classroom mailbox is in my home office because the kids were putting all kinds of things inside it. Play food, books, office supplies, bark and wood chips, socks, leftover snacks, and... themselves. They climbed on it, lounged across it, and occasionally drew on it. Since it was made for me by a parent over a decade ago, I opted to rescue it.

This entry will serve as an introduction. We have at least six confirmed members of our reading group and most of us haven't met each other. So, because I am the ringleader, I will start with a brief introduction of myself.

I am a teacher. I have been in the classroom since 1995. It is part of my identity and describes what it is I do. Teaching is a habit of heart, something that calls to you; it is more than a paycheck or a job: it is an adventure. People who teach and don't feel that way really shouldn't be in the classroom. It takes too much passion, dedication, and energy to do well if you don't feel called to it. The profession is filled with crappy teachers and most of them remain in the classroom because we are educators, not politicians. We are not good at policing ourselves. So we 'allow' politicians, bureaucrats, and control freaks with nothing better to do run things. Haven't they done a fantastic job so far? Don't get me started. I am going off on a tangent.

I have been married 33 years to Dan the Fishing Man (he bowls, too) and live in West Palmdale. We have two outstanding sons: Danny is married to Brandy, whom he met while attending Chico State. They have the most precious baby in the world, my granddaughter, Mable Kats. Danny is a Game Warden with the Dept of Fish and Game in Ventura County. My younger son is Dustin, the boy I could take anywhere, at any time, and he would make friends. After years of working in my classrooms and swearing he would NEVER ever (in a million years) be a teacher, he earned his teaching credentials last year and is now teaching 6th Grade at SCVi. How is THAT for an excellent situation? Word on the street is that he is pretty good at it. Yeah, I am proud.

I am a reader. I love books and always have a stack on my nightstand, on the coffee table, and in my home office. I have been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember. I recall being in first grade and being in love with Ricky Beasley (who never talked) but I don't remember learning to read. I remember flopping down anywhere and everywhere with a book. I hid from the world through books.

I hope this book study will encourage us to engage in the thoughtful dialogue that sparks change. I hope it allows us to find our collective voices and add them to the educational process that is our school - the one that is seeking to be different, better, a ripple in the education pond. The more we know, the better we can be.

How do you see yourself as a reader? How do you view public education? What are your goals for this book study?

I will state up front that I do not agree wholeheartedly with everything Gatto says in this book. But reading it energized me - I could not put it down. It stayed in my head for days.

Please introduce yourself. Then... let's read!

:-)Kim