By: David Conde
As the present school year comes to an end and COVID slowly passes, I find myself considering my own challenges in the educational system that I grew up in and the profound changes that have occurred over the years. I remember my first grade in a rural school in central Texas and my teacher, a heavy-set lady that always ate salad for lunch.
She led us through a paperback book that introduced the important characters that were later prominent in the foundational first-grade textbook, Fun with Dick and Jane. To me, this opened the door to a whole new world.
The event was accompanied by very strict orders from my mother who made it clear that our teachers were to be treated as parents once we were away from home and in the school building. I honored the special reverence in this order because, to me, learning and the teacher were synonymous.
As I became comfortable with the classroom, reading, and the library I also gained more respect for what teachers do even though sometimes they demonstrated attitudes and idiosyncrasies that negatively affected my sense of self. I never questioned their instructional delivery, style, or behavior because understanding those things were also characteristics that needed to be mastered.
There came a time however when the “walls” of the school became narrow and dark making me feel very out of place. This intense feeling also made me want to continue my education in a different way.
The social and political turmoil of the 1960s and 70s confirmed my discomfort with educational institutions and moved me to join a search for a better way to relate to culturally distinct people. The effort resulted in a greater access to higher education for minorities who, when given the opportunity, chose in large numbers teaching and the social sciences professions as their careers.
I also selected teacher education as my program of studies thinking I could that I could make a difference like others had made in my own journey. By then, however, the general attitude toward public education and teachers was in the process of changing to the negative.
I heard very clearly from others that people went into the teaching profession because they were not very capable of doing anything else well. I later learned that the negative attitude came, in large part, from the post-World War II generation that already had put their children through school and were generally no longer interested in bettering the institution and its teachers.
The great advancements made in K-12 education in the second half of the 20th century appeared to have gone by the wayside because of the low support for our institutions that increasingly faced the challenge of serving the language and cultural needs of diverse communities.
During COVID the K-12 sector of our public schools became dysfunctional and could not respond to the needs for technological systems required to overcome the curriculum limitations caused by the closing of schools.
It is significant that the 2019 arrival of COVID-19 coincided with the emergence of the Millennial majority that is now beginning to exercise its influence on America’s politics and institutions. Of major interest to the new majority is the quality of public education as they do have children in school.
Millennial interest in the schooling of children also promises to make especially K-12 instruction a centerpiece of a revitalized teaching profession. What is standing in the way is the older generation that finds letting go difficult.
