Ye Olde Town Hall
After having my girlfriend Catherine's father's car break down in Batesville today and having to wait to get it towed and find a ride and everything after spending the weekend moving furniture in Jackson, I'm a little exhausted. Not to mention cranky and brief. Brevity is the soul of wit, but brevity in my case right now means, "Holy crap, I have two blogs due at midnight and I haven't done my STAI yet because I lost an entire day of my life today." So, with all apologies for my lack of energy for writing tonight, here are my thoughts on the town hall meeting from the reunion weekend which I failed to mention in my last post.
A funny question was posed, and a quirky conversation ensued. What do we think the purpose of MTCorps should be, as opposed to what it actually is. I'll be damned if I ever witnessed a less inspiring discourse in my life, though luckily enough for my worn out emotional and intellectual states, Governor Winter's speech was there to rekindle the fighting spirit in me. Basically, it boiled down to the vast majority of people telling us that we need to be good teachers - one child at a time, as it goes - and focus on lesson planning, classroom management, and adjusting to the realities of poverty-stricken schools while the few and the proud among the first years spoke out for a more idealistic and radical approach to solving Mississippi's educational and social difficulties. (I apologize for the biased overgeneralization that either has occurred or will occur, but lest anyone lambast me on exactly that point, keep in mind that I am aware of it and this is not the forum to compose a formal and exhaustive evaluation of the matter.) Positive change in the course of human events and actions, it seems, has a mind of its own and occurs gradually over time, and those who would become social agitators have no place being trained by the MTCorps.
Well, the question was what should be the purpose of MTCorps, and it's perfectly valid to claim that its purpose should not only be to produce good teachers but also good social reformers. I don't really see the difference between the two anyway. It's not that we all have to go crazy and start riots in the streets, and it's not like I have any idea what social reform in Mississippi would entail specifically and concretely, but hell, there has been a lot of time and energy poured into the state and the Delta in particular over the years, so how long exactly are we to wait? I mean, what's so wrong with being a good teacher strictly speaking and running a seminar once a semester outside of class hours to show kids how to use a condom or, God forbid, go to college. I for one am not particularly content to tell a kid to graduate high school so he can work at the factory for $10 an hour instead of McDonald's for $7 an hour, but then again, I'm also fairly big on speaking out against the capitalist need for cheap poverty-level labor too, so take it for what it's worth.
Forgive me for being philosophic about this, but for as much as Tolstoy is one of my favortie authors ever, it's a bit tough to swallow the idea that we're all cogs in the machine with no hope of individual reform. He may just be right about it, but it's not exactly conducisive to leading an inspiring life, is it? On the other hand, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail about how time changes nothing, people change society. One of the biggest arguments against desegregation was that over time the older generations would die out and the newer, more progressive, more enlightened generations would naturally discard the old ideas. And we'd still be making the same arguments if a few key individuals like King didn't step up to the plate and actually do something about it. Am I going to trust that the kids I teach over the next few years are going to want to accept gays in society or find creative ways to dig Mississippi out of its self-made grave, let alone do it, simply by teaching them about declensions and conjugations and making sure they behave and pay attention in class? And if it isn't the teacher's job to inspire in this way, whose is it?
I've heard this question from Ms. Cornelius I believe and in all honesty would love to hear the rationale from someone if I'm not hitting the nail on the head: why aren't there any history teachers coming out of MTCorps? Is there no shortage of history teachers when there seems to be a critical shortage of all other types of teachers? Are there that many history majors in college that they vastly outnumber the rest of us? Or is there simply no shortage of people who are willing to hire history teachers qualified or unqualified in order to distort America's darker historical moments in order to keep the status quo in favor of those people doing the hiring?
Okay, so I've crossed the line into being a conspiracy theorist, and I emphasize once again that I do not know how specifically to go about positive, radical social change nor do I believe I've laid out the most rational argument for what I'm trying to say here. But hey, Bill O'Reilly can come out and explicitly say on TV that he doesn't need to back up his opinions with reasons nor should he feel guilty about having an ostensive conservative bias, so what need do I have to hide from my own biases and lack of bullet-proof reasoning when the time is short? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't down here to become a good teacher, but I recall Dr. Mullins saying many times that the program started with a bunch of Harvard graduates who saw teaching in Mississippi as almost missionary work, and I'd also be lying if I didn't buy into that hook, line, and sinker. What exactly happened to that idealism? In my usual state of mind filled with good faith, I do want to simply do as I'm told what with the scholarship issue and everything and I know that we're all good people with good intentions doing what we can. But in my darker and broodier moments, it seems like it's all a ploy to get these good people down here before we're told something completely different. Mind you, I'm not going crazy or doubting the value of what we're here for and what we're being taught or anything, but right or wrong it's good to stir the pot a little bit to see what rises to the surface just to see what rises to the surface, and since I feel pretty healf-dead after the weekend and today especially, I figured now's the time to do it.
So, to sum up: how do the readers of my blog feel about teachers as social reformers in addition to pure classroom educators, whatever the hell that means to begin with, and why exactly are none of us teaching, say, American or Mississippian history in the fall?
A funny question was posed, and a quirky conversation ensued. What do we think the purpose of MTCorps should be, as opposed to what it actually is. I'll be damned if I ever witnessed a less inspiring discourse in my life, though luckily enough for my worn out emotional and intellectual states, Governor Winter's speech was there to rekindle the fighting spirit in me. Basically, it boiled down to the vast majority of people telling us that we need to be good teachers - one child at a time, as it goes - and focus on lesson planning, classroom management, and adjusting to the realities of poverty-stricken schools while the few and the proud among the first years spoke out for a more idealistic and radical approach to solving Mississippi's educational and social difficulties. (I apologize for the biased overgeneralization that either has occurred or will occur, but lest anyone lambast me on exactly that point, keep in mind that I am aware of it and this is not the forum to compose a formal and exhaustive evaluation of the matter.) Positive change in the course of human events and actions, it seems, has a mind of its own and occurs gradually over time, and those who would become social agitators have no place being trained by the MTCorps.
Well, the question was what should be the purpose of MTCorps, and it's perfectly valid to claim that its purpose should not only be to produce good teachers but also good social reformers. I don't really see the difference between the two anyway. It's not that we all have to go crazy and start riots in the streets, and it's not like I have any idea what social reform in Mississippi would entail specifically and concretely, but hell, there has been a lot of time and energy poured into the state and the Delta in particular over the years, so how long exactly are we to wait? I mean, what's so wrong with being a good teacher strictly speaking and running a seminar once a semester outside of class hours to show kids how to use a condom or, God forbid, go to college. I for one am not particularly content to tell a kid to graduate high school so he can work at the factory for $10 an hour instead of McDonald's for $7 an hour, but then again, I'm also fairly big on speaking out against the capitalist need for cheap poverty-level labor too, so take it for what it's worth.
Forgive me for being philosophic about this, but for as much as Tolstoy is one of my favortie authors ever, it's a bit tough to swallow the idea that we're all cogs in the machine with no hope of individual reform. He may just be right about it, but it's not exactly conducisive to leading an inspiring life, is it? On the other hand, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail about how time changes nothing, people change society. One of the biggest arguments against desegregation was that over time the older generations would die out and the newer, more progressive, more enlightened generations would naturally discard the old ideas. And we'd still be making the same arguments if a few key individuals like King didn't step up to the plate and actually do something about it. Am I going to trust that the kids I teach over the next few years are going to want to accept gays in society or find creative ways to dig Mississippi out of its self-made grave, let alone do it, simply by teaching them about declensions and conjugations and making sure they behave and pay attention in class? And if it isn't the teacher's job to inspire in this way, whose is it?
I've heard this question from Ms. Cornelius I believe and in all honesty would love to hear the rationale from someone if I'm not hitting the nail on the head: why aren't there any history teachers coming out of MTCorps? Is there no shortage of history teachers when there seems to be a critical shortage of all other types of teachers? Are there that many history majors in college that they vastly outnumber the rest of us? Or is there simply no shortage of people who are willing to hire history teachers qualified or unqualified in order to distort America's darker historical moments in order to keep the status quo in favor of those people doing the hiring?
Okay, so I've crossed the line into being a conspiracy theorist, and I emphasize once again that I do not know how specifically to go about positive, radical social change nor do I believe I've laid out the most rational argument for what I'm trying to say here. But hey, Bill O'Reilly can come out and explicitly say on TV that he doesn't need to back up his opinions with reasons nor should he feel guilty about having an ostensive conservative bias, so what need do I have to hide from my own biases and lack of bullet-proof reasoning when the time is short? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't down here to become a good teacher, but I recall Dr. Mullins saying many times that the program started with a bunch of Harvard graduates who saw teaching in Mississippi as almost missionary work, and I'd also be lying if I didn't buy into that hook, line, and sinker. What exactly happened to that idealism? In my usual state of mind filled with good faith, I do want to simply do as I'm told what with the scholarship issue and everything and I know that we're all good people with good intentions doing what we can. But in my darker and broodier moments, it seems like it's all a ploy to get these good people down here before we're told something completely different. Mind you, I'm not going crazy or doubting the value of what we're here for and what we're being taught or anything, but right or wrong it's good to stir the pot a little bit to see what rises to the surface just to see what rises to the surface, and since I feel pretty healf-dead after the weekend and today especially, I figured now's the time to do it.
So, to sum up: how do the readers of my blog feel about teachers as social reformers in addition to pure classroom educators, whatever the hell that means to begin with, and why exactly are none of us teaching, say, American or Mississippian history in the fall?
posted by David Jones | 21:34
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