09 March 2007

Countdown in Purgatory

Drugs are sold in the bathrooms, by both boys and girls...

Students of both sexes stumble into classrooms, stoned...

Teachers can't call the police because the Department refuses to support any action they take...

Students can't be suspended or expelled unless they commit a violent crime. and yet, the expelled scum from other schools land in this school, forced to accept them by Department of Education bigwigs...


The school, a junior high in Cayey, is where My mom works, an eighth-grade English teacher with 34 years of experience. She has always been passionate about teaching, about being there for her students no matter what. Several years ago, only four days after being hit by a randomly-fired bullet that shattered her right elbow, she left her recovery bed and started the school semester. She almost passed out the second day of class, but even so, she only missed one day in the entire year.

But now, in the midst of what can only be described as an organizational meltdown, My mom says she doesn't really want to go to school anymore. The decades of exuberant joy she brought to her work, a joy that students still remember and want their children to experience with her, has been swept away by the reality of a school system that is too stupid, too soft and too blind to do the job right.

Students know they have the upper hand and use it, oblivious and indifferent to their future being sucked into a sewer. Why the hell should they care when they see the so-called Department of Education making boneheaded mistakes with the regularity of a cuckoo clock, or when they see the so-called government leaders acting like boneheaded cuckoos?

Drugs, teenage pregnancies, guns, knives, threats, gangs, incompetence, indifference and politization have taken the ideal of education and turned it into the anteroom of Purgatory. Education administrators are political warthogs, school directors are political lackeys and teachers are paycheck hounds, and all lack the educational vision, commitment and knowledge that the vital process of forging responsible adults needs.

Can the educational system be saved? Not in its present form. And the paltry minority of competent administrators, directors and teachers is far too small to overcome the gargantuan mass of morons and ridiculous regulations that rot the educational system from inside and out.

In the meantime, My mom counts the day to her retirement, when last year at this time she was pondering sticking around for another 3-4 years. Even her colleagues who once pleaded with her to stay are now pleading with her to "stay cool," to avoid any problem that could turn what should be the bittersweet happy final days of a career built on caring into a even bigger nightmare.

I have said it before: We have thrown away the education of two school generations over the past 25 years. As long as We continue to let subnormal lower primates run Our schools--as "educators" and "students"--We will never achieve any true progress...and Our lives will be held hostage by Our failures.


The Jenius Has Spoken.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am an experienced inner city educator who has the best interest in students. I am an educator, not a teacher. I would like to open a charter school or a private school that focuses on providing inner city children (economically disadvantaged) with the opportunity the wyould otherwise not have if left in the public school system in Puerto Rico. Where can I find more information on the specifics of opening such an institution. I would like to start small (small school in Cabo Rojo/Mayaguez) and expand as the need dictates. Where do I start researching?