33. In Loco Parentis
Our children are small and naive but we love them, therefore we must have guard rails to guide them through their education. For the first 200 years of our history the classroom teacher has been an important guardian of the guard rails that guide our children. In Loco Parentis is Latin for an adult parenting in the absence of the parents. Although not a law this was accepted by parents, administrators and unambiguously communicated to the child. Parenting was an ethical believe shared throughout America. Neighborhood adults would parent young adults and children in the absence of the parents. Parents had numerous methods of disciplining their children, that was considered family business. Most parents accepted the schoolyard and neighborhood umbrella of absentee parenting, even if it included reasonable punishment for bad behavior because it helped parents form guiding guardrails for societies younger members.
Today things have changed. School bureaucracies along with State and National bureaucrats will not allow the classroom teacher to parent. Or if they do the parenting must conform with the bureaucracy’s ridget guidelines. However, since the bureaucrats are not in the classroom, they are clueless, independent of their good intentions.
Abraham is a seven-year-old turning eight in second grade. Every morning in school he enters into a ritual during which he stands up and paces up and down, cries and screams. It has been going on since he entered first grade. His classroom teachers no longer have the powers of a parent. They are no longer allowed to discipline the children and the children know it right away. The teacher is supposed to ask Abraham why? “My daddy hit me.” The teacher today is required to report this to superiors. By turning in the father Abrahams acting out is no longer the issue. The education system today intrudes into what traditionally was the family’s business. Maybe more importantly tolerating Abraham’s bad behavior at school ensures its recurrence, future outbursts will disturb the educational process again and again. Reports are filled out and turned in to childcare. A speech therapist is set up for appointments as well as a psychologist. All of this would have been avoided had the teacher been allowed to parent and dole out an undesirable consequence to the child to inhibit further outbursts.
With no consequence, the school should not be surprised if the next day Abraham acts out again, continuing his classroom disruption of important teaching time. In the past when the teacher acted as parent the teacher would have told Abraham to “keep quiet!” and doled out a second consequence likely more undesirable than the first. If he repeatedly acted out the teacher would have disciplined him, maybe by drawing a circle on the blackboard, and telling Abraham to stick his nose in it. If that didn’t work there would have been meetings between teacher and the parents. Family was always involved with the teacher and supported the teachers’ efforts to seek a solution. Today a circus mix of woke confusion, diversity, equity, inclusion, often wrongly holding the family accountable rather than the child for the derelict behavior of the child. Education today should offer equal opportunity for their students’ different skills, based solely on merit.
On October 24, 2022 the NY Times wrote “Math and reading proficiency among 4th graders has sunk to 36% and 33% and among 8th graders only 26% and 31% are proficient” The article went on to quote Miguel Cardona, Secretary of Education. “The results are appalling and unacceptable.”
Worse than that according to National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) “We are spending $17,013 per pupil in Public Schools which is 187%” increase (above inflation) since 1970 and the third highest in the World (behind Luxemburg and Norway) while our 15 year olds scored 26 among 81 nations in Math on the PIA test 2022.” (National Science Foundation-Gov.) and “today only 26% our high school seniors are proficient in science.” (NAEP).
For decades, the Boards of Education and the Superintendents of Schools. Have rubber-stamped public-school budgets. County Officials have merely rubberstamped whatever they were given by the Superintendent and the Board of Education. This failure has led to school costs increasing almost 200% above inflation since 1970 while school achievements have unfortunately plummeted! In light of the decline in academics and the runaway costs of education every citizen should be alarmed, and insisting on dramatic change.
Why has the expense of education per student in America skyrocketed, above inflation over the last 50 years yet math, science and reading proficiency, have dramatically declined? Recently in Baltimore math proficiency was 0%!
There are many theories that try to explain the decline of our once peerless public education system as well as the hugely higher after inflation cost to educate. It is almost as if the more we spent the more ignorant our school children become. The critical change in public education over the last 50 years has been taking the parenting out of the classroom teacher. The education bureaucracy’s repression of parenting for a generation can be traced directly to the tribal behavior by young adults on college campuses today.
Our children are small and naive but we love them, so why are we depriving them the tools and the guardrails of a classroom teacher acting as parent to help form their development? Why are teachers required to report parents for disciplining their child? Undermining the strength of the family should have no part in education. The fact is, as we have done in the welfare system, we migrated responsibility to a State and Federal level and took it away from the parents and the classroom teacher where it had a direct positive impact on the child. When we repress the parent from the adults responsible to raise and educate our children, the child responds accordingly, often defiantly.
For 200 years classroom teachers in America were the envy of the world. K-12 education consisted of a room with 30-35 students, a blackboard with chalk, and a classroom teacher who was trusted with parental authority. The teacher would compose and present their curriculum to the assistant principal for approval. Once approved, the classroom teacher was 100% backed by the principal, the superintendent and of course the parents who all gave complete control of the classroom to the classroom teacher. This included disciplinary matters as that insured a quiet attentive teaching environment for the children. The teacher had the power of a parent.
What are we doing today? The circus in our woke environment teaching that some are privileged and those who aren’t can be excused from merit requirements as we practice diversity, equity and inclusion and minimize merit. Today we have speech therapists, sign language interpreters, psychologists, occupational therapists, teaching assistants and the classes are half the size. With all those professionals and all that attention why are we failing to educate our young? If we are not educating them to the same level as before, what are they doing? Public school in every County has become more about indoctrination then education.
Children today are not allowed to experience the full structure of the classroom teacher with the power of a parent so important in forming their young personality. So, some will keep “acting out” disrupting teaching for the majority. Recently a crowd of young adult students at Stanford Law School acting out in a primitive tribal manner, overthrew a lecture by an appellate judge. My fear is, as time passes, there will be no social memory of traditional education as a guide. Where is the classroom parenting when we need it?
Tribal outbreaks on campuses by young adults today will only be avoided in the future if we return to classroom parenting of our children in primary and secondary schools today.
Have a blessed day!
Tony Christ