OK, no more fuckin' self-pity

I've been really fuckin' bummed, lately.

The toughest part of my job is always having to deal with so much fuckin' bullshit about how thinking doesn't matter, how education doesn't matter, how these kids will never amount to anything, how it's all doomed, how there is a million explanations, labels, diagnoses, and whatever other fuckin' bullshit for why they don't fuckin' like school and why they don't want to either do their fuckin' work or be decent human beings in the meantime.

It wears on me, like a fuckin' emotional albatross from hell.

And these last 2 weeks, it has depressed the shit out of me. Because giving into that bullshit means giving up a commitment I have had since I was in grad school to prove to these kids, these families, these teachers, and to the fuckin' world that these kids are not retards, forgive my french. That these kids are not beyond the pale of intelligence and decency. That these kids can learn, they can be smart, if they so choose, or at least smarter than they were yesterday, that they can take on more serious intellectual challenges, if they so choose, and that, generally, the problem of intelligence and stupidity in the world is not one of heritable differences or biological destiny. It is a matter of deciding that you're going to do the fuckin' work to ante up and make your contribution.

And, lately, it is not just too many academics and teachers who seemed to have given up on these kids. It is the kids who have generally given up on themselves that was the real fuckin' problem.

And I was left with a quandry.

If intelligence and developing it really is a matter of choice and doing the work, if people don't want to do the work and you really can't force them to if they don't want to - if you doubt that, I would highly suggest that you visit my school and my kids will teach you a thing or two - why would I spend all my time and energy doing something that even the kids don't want for themselves?

But the truth I think I saw today was is that, in addition to the kids kicking and screaming and trying to avoid the work that they don't like doing and which gets harder the more they avoid doing it, a lot of my kids are scared that they can't do it. And they are so used to swimming in this bullshit that they begin to confuse it with something more honest.

And the much bigger truth, of course, is that, like most kids, my kids often don't really want to be in school. Most adults don't like to be at work. It's just something they have to do. And, like most people, my kids just want to be able to direct their own lives, and they get tired of being made to do a lot of things they don't want to do. I can't say it's without their input, because I ask for their input, all the time. But they really just don't like doing things they don't like to do, like most people, really. They're just much shittier about it, unfortunately for me.

And I decided, today, feeling myself wallow a little in some self-pity about the whole situation, and thinking about how weak I think Michael Barone, of the U.S. News and World Report, is for acting all tough when the truth is that he is constantly wallowing in self-pity about how the scholarly world has not recognized his brilliance, that there will be no more self-pity for me.

I will prove myself as a teacher, as a scholar, as a writer, as an investor, and as whatever the fuck I put my energies into, or I will not. And that is the one and final fuckin' bottom line on that one. And there will be no fuckin' self-pity in my life. Not a shred. Either I do the job or not. And that is all there fuckin' is to it.

I've got an IEP to finish. And I've got lessons I need to jazz up and make more fun and interesting and light-hearted for the kids. And I have a world of intellect and education that I need to make available even to the shittiest behaving kids. Because that's my fuckin' job. And I don't give two shits what excuses I might have about that job or not, anymore.

Time for me to get to work.