
Fortress of Tedium: What I Learned as a Substitute Teacher - sperant
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/magazine/fortress-of-tedium-what-i-learned-as-a-substitute-teacher.html?src=longreads&_r=0
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jseliger
By the way, one thing I have discovered (the hard way, mostly) in teaching as
an adjunct is that there is no penalty for being boring but there can be a
penalty for being interesting, at least for many values of "interesting." I
wrote a post "How do you know when you’re being insensitive? How do you know
when you’re funny?" ([https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-
your...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/12/22/how-do-you-know-when-youre-being-
insensitive-how-do-you-know-when-youre-funny/)) that deals in part with these
issues.

The tedium of the school system is real, but it is also in part a reaction to
a simple nature fact: A single unhappy student (or parent) can cause a great
deal of stress and a great number of problems for a given teacher or set of
administrators. Consequently, the default of the individual teacher is towards
material and processes that are inoffensive—and easy to grade on a pass-fail
basis. The worry for many teachers and administrators is about the worst-case
scenario.

I used to wonder why school is so boring and I used to promise myself that if
I were in charge it'd be different. Now I know why.

------
themartorana
_...high school is wondrously efficient at making interesting things dull...
"_

Ain't that the truth. I learned that not because I recognized it my day to day
as a student, but because I had one or two teachers in high school that were
absolutely exceptional (I was lucky, some kids encounter none) and the droning
background noise of the rest of education became very stark in comparison.

It's impossible to teach hundreds of students a year and make everything
fantastical the whole time (not to mention that some kids will never give one
f*ck about US History or whatever their natural predilections dictate) but man
oh man does the current Common Core driven, test-everything, no-rote-learning-
except-test-all-rote-learning way of looking at education just crush students.

And you don't have to ask a student - most teachers today will bemoan the
degree to which their hands are tied to properly educate and, more
importantly, make learning fun, by bureaucracies run by educational theorists
who have never spent a day in a classroom.

~~~
khedoros
I can think of three high school classes that were great because of the
teachers (an English class, a geometry class, and a shop class), and maybe
three that were great because of their self-learning nature (my first
programming class, an engineering class, and an after-school
electronics+engineering class taught by the shop teacher).

For everything else, I've got to agree. Take my US History class. I think it's
important to know the events that shaped our culture, know roughly the order
they came in, and about when they happened and _why_. The name and date of a
19th century law involving share croppers? Sure, I'll be able to write an
essay on it for the test, because I know that's the requirement, but ask me 6
months later, and I won't be able to tell you much about it.

~~~
bitwize
"Sure, I'll be able to write an essay on it for the test, because I know
that's the requirement, but ask me 6 months later, and I won't be able to tell
you much about it."

Here's a secret: That's the point of the class. School is mainly there to
teach you to take assignments, follow directions, and cough up results on
demand, irrespective of whether you actually care about the subject. It's a
much-in-demand business skill.

~~~
bsder
> Here's a secret: That's the point of the class. School is mainly there to
> teach you to take assignments, follow directions, and cough up results on
> demand, irrespective of whether you actually care about the subject. It's a
> much-in-demand business skill.

I get tired of people dumping on schools.

The problem with school is that most of the consumers of said education are
unmotivated slackers whom you practically have to beat the information into.

There are many reasons for people to not like school (social aspects--both
personal and community--certainly being a big problem), but, I have _ZERO_
sympathy for anyone who complains that it was boring, uninteresting drudgery
from an educational standpoint.

Yes, everybody has bumped into the teacher that is retired-in-place--these
people exist in any long-lived institution including companies. But, dear God,
most teachers are desperate for _any_ student to show even a modicum of
interest in what they are teaching. Even in the worst schools, there always
seems to be a handful of teachers lighting the way.

If you found your education boring, it's because you didn't exert even the
minimum amount of effort necessary to get the attention of those teachers. And
that's your own damn fault.

~~~
khedoros
> The problem with school is that most of the consumers of said education are
> unmotivated slackers whom you practically have to beat the information into.

So, we agree there's a problem. It's immaterial if the issue is in the school
itself or in the students. The material fact is that the tool you're using
(the current educational system) isn't having the effect that you want
(imparting useful information and useful ways to think about it).

Say that I've got a polished, high-quality product, heavily advertised, easily
available, and cheap. But: sales numbers are terrible. Is it the potential
customers that are the problem, or is it something about the product? Put
another way, is it more useful to fight against the nature of the customers,
or to modify the product into something that will convince them to buy and use
it?

If most people are unmotivated, I don't think it's reasonable or constructive
to just say "all well, they should've just tried harder". I think it's more
useful to assume that they aren't _inherently_ slackers and diagnose and fix
the problems in the system to improve the experience for the students and the
outcome for society, overall.

~~~
bsder
> It's immaterial if the issue is in the school itself or in the students.

Um, that is, in fact, kind of a _VERY_ big deal. If the problem is the
students, your solutions are mostly about fixing things _outside_ the school.

> The material fact is that the tool you're using (the current educational
> system) isn't having the effect that you want (imparting useful information
> and useful ways to think about it).

I somewhat disagree with this. The system appears to be generating a certain
average level of education. We would _like_ the system to be generating a
higher average level of education. No one has yet shown that there is a better
way of doing this than the current system, sadly, without expending a _lot_
more focused resource than people are politically willing to exert.

> I think it's more useful to assume that they aren't inherently slackers and
> diagnose and fix the problems in the system to improve the experience for
> the students and the outcome for society, overall.

The problem isn't that students don't want an education--the problem is that
there is almost always something right _now_ (sports, guys/girls, video games,
Facebook/Snapchat/Line) that they want _more_.

This is what a school is fighting against. Good luck.

~~~
teslabox
> No one has yet shown that there is a better way of doing this than the
> current system, sadly, without expending a lot more focused resource than
> people are politically willing to exert.

John Holt wrote "how children fail" and "how children learn" at least 40 years
ago. John Gatto wrote "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory
Schooling" 25 years ago.

The education problem is very well defined, but it can't be fixed or addressed
because of inertia, and because of who benefits from the status quo.

~~~
bsder
> John Holt wrote "how children fail" and "how children learn" at least 40
> years ago. John Gatto wrote "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of
> Compulsory Schooling" 25 years ago.

Holt is not a particularly good figure to cite to back up your assertions.
"Education" books are like most "business" books, very little research and
data to back up scores of anecdotes. This doesn't automatically make him
wrong, but many of his ideas have been overturned and refuted by actual
research and investigation.

However, your point stands and we are in agreement with the fact that there is
no political will to expend the resource required to improve educational
attainment.

------
FeepingCreature
Also, in a similar vein: SlateStarCodex Gives A Graduation Speech
[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-
graduation-...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/23/ssc-gives-a-graduation-
speech/)

~~~
pjscott
In the same vein, sure, but an order of magnitude more grim. And more
beautiful. I'll recommend this article until the sun burns out. Or until the
educational system gets its act together -- but I repeat myself.

------
zyxley
My high school was an interesting experience. It was a poor area and they
expected few of the students to go to further education - but rather than use
that as an excuse to treat the students like losers, the school tried to
include some of the spread of college and vocational-school classes. I ended
up taking lessons on archery, welding, video editing, and Latin, among other
things.

------
combatentropy
The article was fun to read, deceptively informal. In fact the writing is
brilliant. Almost every sentence has some delightful, unexpected word or
phrase instead of cliche. It also relies heavily on sound. Even when you read
silently, you hear the words. So alliteration, echo, rhyme, and rhythm are
still important.

~~~
iopq
I thought the writing was boring. I had to skip around to get to the part
where he hated schools. Then he didn't really make any conclusion anyway
except "less structure, lol"

~~~
PeterWhittaker
I'm with you: I found it rambling and unappealing.

------
panic
If you liked the writing, check out the 1988 novel _The Mezzanine_ by the same
author (Nicholson Baker). He's also written about Wikipedia
([https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/apr/10/wikipedia.internet)).

------
Uroboric
During high school I became aware of community colleges and it actually
occurred to me that all the homework and stress involved with maintaining a
high GPA simply wasn't worth it. I took easy electives and barely passed
everything else.

------
ninjabeans
Lovely read.

