“How many bars of soap would it take to wash out the mouths of our most vulgar students? I’m not advocating such an archaic punishment, but if I hear just one more Junior High school student offer greetings and salutations to his peers with a: wassup beeach? or how’z it mother f@cker?, I am going to lose my composure and thrash someone with a complete, unabridged Webster’s dictionary.
“Can’t we all just get along?” The popularized outcry by Rodney King captures the essence of cooperative learning with kids. Everyday children are put to the task of working together as a class, in groups or pairs, without systematic preparation or training. The result is often a breakdown in rank and file with dissention leading the attack. Here’s an example:
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” In Israel it is sacrosanct to say: “just don’t let it be me.” The atmosphere in school today parallels this mantra.
Remember the old trash compactors? You shoved in as much garbage as possible, compressed it and added some more. Neat, tidy bundles of waste, prepared for dumping, dense and inert. Lot’s of energy goes into packing, but once they are imbedded in the ground, how useful are they? Clearly some material can be recycled. But how do we begin the sorting process? How much information that we impart to kids today will be useful to them and society in the future? Are we helping them sort the trash or just cramming in more?
“You know your teacher is possessed by Beelzebub when his or her head rotates 360 degrees at the blackboard. But is this what it takes to effectively keep watch over a classroom while a teacher unveils a frontal lesson? All adults who work with kids instinctively understand that they love to deny their mischievous behavior when the teacher isn’t looking. It’s one of the hallmarks of adolescent classroom acuity. Lest you grow eyes in the back of your head, educators are in a significantly vulnerable position. So how does one fight back?