I had a conversation with my kids, today, which helped me understand, better, today, why so many adults just seem so clueless and foolish and nasty, all the time...
The conversation I had with my kids was about not quitting...about my concern that some of them were quitting...on the class...on themselves...and how I wasn't quitting on any of them...and the thing that would make THE difference between them experiencing success or failure in my class and in life was whether or not, when the going got tough...they quit...
It was an interesting conversation for me to be having...
Because...I've been saying that if things don't work out for me, here, at Eisenhower...then I may be leaving the profession for good...
I'm a really outstanding teacher, really...
But I'm way past my limits of patience in dealing with the stupidity and the bureaucracy of school districts and schools and all kinds of places...but I'm just kind of fed up with the education field around this one, right now...
My stepmom and I talked about this, recently...and her attitude really exemplified exactly what I'm fed up with...
The stubborness...the foolish and stupid and unthinking defensiveness around it...the total inability to just face the honest reality of just how much the bureaucracy and the rules and all kinds of formalities really fuck life up...
Here's a great example I can think of...
I was an really strong competitor in college and high school in speech and debate...I was one of the best in the country, when I competed...I'm also a very good teacher, I think, and I think most of my colleagues would agree...
But because my undergrad, Wichita State, cut their speech certification for teaching my senior year of college...I don't have official liscensure to coach speech...
Now I am without a doubt 100 times better, at least, than many if not most of the people who have speech education degrees in the state...people who would be able to teach speech, officially...
My friend, Carson, is far better than 99% of the people with similar liscences...
But neither of us could coach speech, officially, because we lack to required certifications...which have everything to do with regulations and nothing at all to do with ability or talent...
It's insanity...
And the only people who defend it are people who have no fuckin' clue what they're doing...or people who want to believe in such regulations, because of their intentions, and who have not come to terms, fully, with their actual consequences...
Having said all that...
I did tell the kids that she shouldn't ever quit...
I'm just tired...
I'm tired of fighting stupidity like it deserves to be treated as something better than it really is...I'm tired of my efforts being judged by so many other criteria other than their merits...I'm tired of everyone pretending like all those rules and regulations are more worthy than they really are...
And I'm mostly tired of people pretending like they really respect rules and regulations and authority better than they really do...
I'm someone who follows them more than most...I just know that following them doesn't mean anything, really, unless it does...in which case, the rule isn't necessary...and the number of rules and regulations we have to deal with in our lives is so excessively demanding on our energies and concentration that I can hardly believe that people defend them like they do...
It doesn't mean that we aren't responsible...it means that our responsibility is and should be to our consciences and judgment, first, and to everything else, second...
I don't want people turning in slaves during the mid-19th Century in America just because that's the law...or Jews in Nazi Germany, for the same reason...
I want people to follow their consciences...I don't want them to follow rules, except when they are in line with their consciences...and even then, the rules are a compromise with a world where
I act out of conscience and genuine free will...
Most people, I'm learning, though...are kind of lazy...
They're lazy workers...lazy thinkers...
And they quit easily...they give up...on excelling...on being a better person...on having a good attitude...on all kinds of things...
And the one thing that people are laziest about...
Is the one thing that seems to insult their pride the most...
Which is admitting when they are wrong...
We watched a documentary on the life of a slave women in 19th Century America, today, in social studies class...
And I saw the sad dichotomy I face...
Slaves had to both maintain the hope that they would one day be granted their freedom...simultaneously recognizing the reality that many of them and their forebearers had died and never seen that world...
I want the freedom that so many would deny me...
I will not quit, in my heart...ever...
But I can see how having someone beat you down...begins to wear down your resolve, some...
And that's what happens to most people, I think...
They see a world that is full of ugliness and all kinds of realities to lose their faith in people...
And so they get worn down...
And they develop a shitty, cynical attitude...
And so they want to quit...
They want to quit working on the one thing that really matters most in the world...
Building a world where everyone -- or more of everyone than not -- takes responsibility for that world...all its problems...constructive solutions to those problems...and honestly acknowledging when a solution has succeeded or failed...and when it's failed...to move on to solutions that will succeed...
And when people live down to cynics' sorry ass expectations of them...because they quit working on it, so long ago...
They say, "See...I told you people couldn't be better, anyway"...
It's the laziest, most sorry-ass, bullshit, cynical attitude in the world...
And it's the one that fucks up more shit than any other...
Well, I don't know in what capacity I'll do it...
But I'm not quitting...
Frederick Douglas escaped slavery after a brutal experience...was recaptured and treated brutally again...and escaped again...before working his entire life to end slavery...
I don't care what happens to me over the course of my lifetime...I will work my entire life to create a world of conscience over rules, no matter what the consequences...
Because it's the right thing to do...
And that's what a strong conscience looks like...
It also matches, better, the reality...that people make their own choices, decisions, and judgments...no matter what we do...
They are just less free to operate more completely out of those consciences in a world of threats and hardship for freely speaking our minds...which is the world we all live in until we take conscience more seriously...
I've got a meeting to get to...
Have a great weekend, everyone...
Love,
Ben
