teacher: savior or oppressor

I just recently watched Detachment, directed by Tony Kaye (who also directed American History X, also about teaching) and starring Adrien Brody.  If you can get past Brody's tragedy mask eyebrows, it's a pretty decent movie--it felt a bit more honest than another recent teaching movie "based on a true story," Freedom Writers (which did make me cry and I love the star Hilary Swank), even though in the Brody flick he sort of creepily, unofficially adopts a teen hooker and when he calls social services they don't seem to question him about the situation at all.  But maybe that's actually a realistic portrayal of an over-extended, under-staffed social services system.  I don't know.

He does get called to task when he's seen comforting (by hugging) a crying female student.  He doesn't want to touch her but she throws herself into his arms and another teacher walks in and is pretty disturbed.  There's a lot of intense backstory there on all sides but even if there weren't I think it's a fairly common belief that even though teachers are supposed to be everything for their students--mentors, social services worker, guidance counselor, babysitter, and (of course) teachers, we are not supposed to befriend our students and certainly not touch them, especially in an opposite sex situation, especially if the teacher is male and the student is a female.

So it occurred to me that teachers are often portrayed as either saviors or oppressors.  The oppressor image is a fairly simple one.  Teachers portrayed in this way are rarely, if ever, central figures.  They are foils--flat characters the student can triumph over in his assertion of independence, value, identity--whatever.  I have no problem with that portrayal, really. 

I have a much bigger problem with the portrayal of the teacher as savior, whether it be a reluctant/ failed savior (as in Detachment) or one who sacrifices everything, even her marriage (as in Freedom Writers).  Movies like this set up incredibly unrealistic expectations about what teaching is.  I think I'm a pretty good teacher but I don't think I'll ever change a student's life and I'm fine with that. That's the way I want it--I don't want the responsibility of changing lives, I just want my students to know a little more going out than they did coming in.

I think a lot of these films are maybe searching for a solution to the problem of social promotion and high dropout rates--schools that instead of inspiring are simply shuffling students along or shuttling them out.  You see this in The Wire as well.  The Wire is admirable in that it does much more than many other stories to try to show the systemic roots of the problem--it is not just a funding issue or a home-life issue or the fault of exhausted teachers who have given up; it is a combination of all of these factors.  Sadly, Detachment, while introducing the issue of the corporatization of schools, seems to conclude it is the parents' fault--joking that a test should be taken for becoming a parent.  Well, that's never going to happen and it's a bunch of wimp-out BS anyway. 

Blame the system, blame the parents, blame the teachers.  F it all.  I say, blame the friggin students.  Make them accountable or kick them out and if parents come in to complain, hold strong and say "Yes, I've kicked your child out of class because she doesn't know that when someone else is speaking you listen attentively and wait until she has finished to speak yourself.  She didn't want to learn this lesson of basic courtesy and therefore is not fit to sit in the classroom."  Now, of course, I'm not talking about middle school but once students reach high school age, the pandering must stop.  When I first got my BA, I sat in on an extra-curricular activity at a charter school--one students had volunteered (with incentives, however) to enroll in.  The young, ambitious woman teaching--no older than 25, was trying desperately to connect--showing the students a documentary about the Nuyorican poets.  But, they weren't even pretending to care.  The students were so loud you couldn't hear the film at all, so the teacher passed out those little 25 cent bags of Doritos and Fritos to shut them up. That day was a huge eye-opener for me.  I though charter schools were this heaven of alternative education, cutting through the old authoritative garbage and then I realized that maybe it wasn't perfect.  Maybe social promotion could even occur in an alternative school.  Maybe I only wanted to teach students who wanted to be in school, so I'd teach college--HA.

Not that I ever dreamed of teaching.  I had a high school teacher who claimed the youth was plagued by apathy with conviction and those who can't do, teach.  Maybe he was joking, but the words stuck.

So I taught because I couldn't think of anything better to do and was really surprised to find I enjoyed teaching but I still hate teaching students who don't want to be taught.  And, as someone who generally teaches freshman, required writing courses, many of my students don't want to be there.  Even when I taught upper-level literature, I found to my dismay that the majority of students were taking the class to fill some "cultural awareness" requirement for a well-rounded education.

The solution is not inspired teachers nor is it parents who care (though both of those are great to have), nor is it, sadly, a complete overhaul of the system, though of course, that needs to be addressed.  There should be desks and books for every student--toilet paper in the bathrooms and less testing, more teaching.  But I think one of the problems with education (both high school and college) is a problem with our society--the sense of entitlement and "means to an end" thinking.  It shouldn't be about handing out the potato chips or getting "good time" (the incentive for taking the English class I taught at the boys' prison--an incentive which was revealed to me by the students, not the admins who hired me; they led me to believe students actually wanted to take the class). Students shouldn't need me to post their midterm grades; if they can't figure out their progress, they need to pay better attention and/ or ask.  And not just ask, "What's my grade so far?" but "How am I doing?  Is my work improving?  How can I try harder?  What new methods do you suggest I attempt?"  The best students are the ones who want to learn--not those who have to be there to fulfill some stupid requirement.  So, maybe Freshman English shouldn't even always be required for every major.  But, then I'd be out of a job--underpaid and under-appreciated as it may be.