I’m feeling a little bitter this morning (Not better, bitter. Bitterer?), so I think the hopeful and thankful tone of last week is not going to happen. I had a dream last night in which I walked away from a student end-of-year celebration, thinking I’ve wasted my life, because I’ve spent it helping students instead of doing what I want to do. That’s not fair (When are dreams ever fair?), because I most definitely haven’t wasted my life, I haven’t spent all of my time teaching and helping students, and the time I have spent helping other people is well-spent, and I am proud of it. Still: I had a rough week this last week, dealing with classes that are ready to be done even though there are months left in the school year, and I’m ready to be done, as well; so I’m a little bitter.

But I already blew an entire once-a-week post on tangents and side issues instead of getting to the point, so I’m not going to do that this time. Unfortunately, I’ve also realized that I’m not sure my insights into what we need to do with education are worth all this buildup; which goes to show that I should spend more time getting to the point and also developing the point before I write and post these. As I said last week, things take time. And since I don’t have a lot of time — I am currently stealing time from three other things I need to do this weekend in order to write this — the quality suffers. Hopefully it’s still worth reading. I’ll try to make it so.

Now, I’ve already written about my ideal school, so I’m not going to do that again. Rather, this post is in response to the comment I have heard and seen more times than I can count in the last year:

Something has to change.

Something in education has to change. This year has been too hard on everyone, but particularly on teachers, who are leaving the profession in droves. I don’t know that I have an idea to fix that, because first, I don’t blame them; I’ve thought about leaving as well, this year more than most; and second, it’s already done: it would be better to try to retain the teachers we still have, and work to recruit new teachers, than to try to bring back the teachers who are burnt out and alienated and don’t want to teach any more. It’s certainly possible that they will come back voluntarily if we make the system better, and that would be good all around.

So that is the goal today. How do we make the system better?

Here are my thoughts.

The first and biggest problem with education in this country isn’t teacher retention; it’s inequity. This country has systemic inequity in the education system, and that has created large-scale inequity along racial and class lines, for generations. Which was, of course, the intended result and the reason why the unequal system was created in the first place. But after Brown v. Board of Education, when segregated schools were no longer legal, the systemic inequity continued, and still exists today, for one main reason: local funding of schools. Most schools are funded by local property taxes. Supposedly because that allows for local control, and for people in a place to have ownership of their local schools; but really, it’s so that the people in rich, predominantly white areas can have the very best schools for their kids, while the people in poorer areas — particularly rural areas and urban areas, where the property tax base is small and property values are low — cannot have the very best schools, and cannot close the gap either in funding or in achievement for their students. This plays out in a hundred different ways: teachers are paid better by the richer districts, which means they stay longer, and generally speaking the better trained and more experienced teachers will migrate towards the wealthier areas. Richer schools have more resources for technology and new curriculum materials, as well as for more programs of all kinds — tech programs, vocational programs, language programs, and so on. This funding problem only gets exacerbated with school funding proposals and referenda, which local districts often propose in order to pay for capital improvements and deferred building maintenance projects; poorer areas are unlikely to vote to raise taxes for local schools, where wealthier areas are more willing to pay more on top of property taxes when there is a need. So over time, the physical buildings in poorer areas fall apart, and become more expensive to maintain while also being impossible to replace; thus more funding is lost to just keeping the lights on and the building heated (or cooled), which also then impacts the funding available for all other needs, squeezing the poorer schools even further.

This truth, by the way, is the main argument behind the rise of charter schools, which allow families in poorer districts to escape the poor schools in their area; this of course doesn’t solve the problem, particularly because charter schools are underregulated and often shady. Trust me: I work for a charter school. And while my school is one of the longer-established and better schools, there are still issues that would not exist if it were a public school. And regardless, giving some kids an escape doesn’t help the kids who can’t get into the schools; traditionally those with learning disabilities, low achievement scores, language barriers, or lack of transportation (because charter schools generally do not provide transportation).

So the first thing we need to do, before anything else, before we discuss curriculum or school structure or even teacher retention, is to equalize funding. The easier way is to do it at the state level, which several states have already done; the only truly fair way is to do it federally. Collect all the money that currently gets paid in local property taxes, put it in one federal fund, and then distribute it to all public school districts in the country. I would say (not having any idea of the actual numbers) 60-75% as a baseline funding for all schools, with the additional 25-40% going to those districts most in need, those with broken down school buildings and ancient textbooks and no technology, and so on. The kids in lower Manhattan and San Francisco can make do with last year’s textbooks for a little while. This article in Forbes shows why this is a good idea for everyone. Even more, it’s just the right thing to do.

Okay: once we’ve got that problem solved, the next problem is teacher retention. (Don’t be surprised: just because it wasn’t the first issue doesn’t mean I’m going to boot teachers down to the bottom of the priority list. I am a teacher, after all.) Now, part of this issue is a done deal: we’ve abused and undervalued teachers for decades, but ratcheted the abuse up in the last two years, and we’ve already broken thousands upon thousands of teachers. That’s all done. It’s going to be really goddamn ugly for the next few years. Some schools have already had to close for lack of staff, and that’s only going to happen more; all of those kids are going to be stuck going to school online for some period of time. Nothing we can do about it other than try to hurry to fix things starting from here.

So the two things we need to do to recruit and retain good teachers are: one, stop abusing them; and two, value them fairly. The second one is easy: pay us more. I’ve been a teacher for 22 years, and I’ve never been paid what I’m worth. Oregon came close, but they also froze my pay for four years after the Great Recession hit (Another reason to use federal funding as a mechanism for all school districts: it would help cushion the blow in the areas hardest hit by economic downturns. Let the districts where the American oligarchs pay taxes make up for the places where people are out of work. Oh wait — the oligarchs don’t pay taxes. Silly me. We should fix that, too. I have a suggestion.), so that wasn’t reflective of my value as a teacher. I moved to Arizona for good and understandable reasons — and took a 40% pay cut when I did. Eight years later, I’m still not making what I made twelve years ago. But at least the cost of living has kept going up. Yes, I have good benefits, and that’s an excellent thing; but also, teachers should be paid more. Simple. I’d like to see a 20% raise across the board; I figure we can fire 75% of the administration and make the numbers work. That’s not a dig at administrators, by the way, who are generally well-meaning people who work incredibly hard; but they would, in my opinion, serve education far better simply by taking up classroom teaching. I’d be happy to see every administrator cut for budget purposes offered a chance to become teachers. We’ll need their help.

In terms of ending the abuse of teachers, it has to begin with working hours. There is no reason whatsoever why teaching has to be a career that requires more than 40 hours a week. We don’t actually teach 40 hours a week, so it should be possible to get all of the work done within the standard 8-hour day — except for two things: teachers have too many students, and too many responsibilities. That’s the abuse. We are required to just keep working even when overburdened with students and classes; we are expected to give up any time that is necessary to have meetings or to complete paperwork and such — and then on top of that, we are socially expected to do things like coach sports, or direct plays, or take field trips, or run extracurricular clubs, all for free, and all for the sake of the children. Look: I’m a teacher. You want a coach, hire one. You want an activities director, hire one. You want a clown, hire one. I teach. That’s what I do. It’s enough. I used to teach 150-200 students at a time, which was absurd; at my charter school, that’s down to more like 100-120 — and it’s still too much. As a high school English teacher, I need time to read and grade essays, and to give feedback on their work; I think I could handle 75-80 students at a time, within a 40-hour week. Give me that, and I will do a better job with the students. It will be worth it, believe me.

And I still want that 20% raise, too. You all owe me for the literally thousands of children I have already helped while simultaneously skimping on my personal budget and worrying about being able to pay my bills.

Okay. Those are the first two things. Now let’s get a little more imaginative.

One thing that I’ve seen in the last year, which actually might give us a chance to take some of the pressure off of schools, is the fact that some students really like online learning. Some really thrive when they don’t have to come into the school building. I definitely think it has to be done right, but if it is, we have an opportunity to not only make up for some of the worst of the local inequalities, but also to solve a problem of getting good teachers to work in unattractive areas: let them live anywhere and teach students who also live anywhere, students who don’t want to come into local schools for any one of a thousand reasons. This will allow us to relieve the worst overcrowding, and to offer larger program options even to students in out of the way places, along with greater resource access for those who need it. Of course, this will require both national broadband infrastructure of a sufficient quality to enable students everywhere to access teachers everywhere, and also a national curriculum. Both are an incredibly good idea, by the way, though I know neither one is practically possible right now. So maybe put a pin in that for now. Having done it for the last two years, seat-of-our-pants online teaching is not better than in person, not for anyone, not even for those kids who prefer it. But long term, it’s genuinely a good opportunity.

But that’s just an observation, based on the students I’ve been working with for the last two years. Let’s get to my ideas. Ready?

Idea #1: Age Is Just A Number

My friend and colleague Lisa has been teaching adult education students (In addition to teaching a full load of high school students. Because she doesn’t get paid enough.) for the last couple of years, and one thing she has frequently commented on is that they are much easier to work with. Because they want to be there. I ranted last week about how absurd it is that we insist on deadlines for education, that we require all students to start at the same age, and that we then require them all to finish at the same time, having all learned at the same pace. And there is literally no reason for it.

So my first idea is this: let people come to school whenever they want — and don’t make them come to school when they don’t want. If they want to drop out at 13, let them. I’ve written before about my friend Carlos’s brilliant idea of a half time in education: Carlos, like me, was a good student through elementary and middle school, and then a terrible student in high school — and then a good student again in college. Because that’s when we wanted to learn, when we wanted to be there. The teenage years for me, educationally, were useless, as they are for thousands and thousands of students. This is much of the problem that my colleagues and I are dealing with right now: because we have students that don’t want to be there, who don’t want to learn, and they are deeply frustrating and terribly draining, requiring extra attention and effort from everyone involved just to deal with them.

So don’t deal with them. Don’t make them come.

Part of me wants to advocate for the European system, where students can choose to take a vocational track and then finish school at 16 to enter the workforce; but that would still put years of frustration on teachers and students and families and everyone involved with those kids who just don’t want to be there. So I’m going to go with this: let them stop going to school whenever they want to (I do think we should have a base education level required, say 8th grade). Let them stay home and play video games if they want; let them go to work if they want. And then, ten years or twenty years or fifty years from now, when they want to go back to 9th grade, let them. Because there is not one single solitary reason why 9th graders all have to be 14 or 15 years old. Grouping students by their birthdays is insane; if I needed to actually prove that (I don’t, because give me one good reason why we do it. I’ll wait.) all I have to do is point at community colleges, where I sat my 19-year-old just-out-of-high-school self next to people of all ages, from 20 to 80, and all of us learned together.

Now: I realize that ending mandatory school leads to a serious potential for abuse, and also losing education due to simple apathy. Teenagers, when given the choice, will all elect to sit at home and play video games for the rest of their lives, and that would be bad for everyone. Well, first, of course, not all teenagers would do that: many of them want to be in school, want to learn, want to progress towards their life goals. And second, many of the ones who dropped out to play video games would decide to go back within a year. You should have heard them complain about staying home during the pandemic. You should have seen how happy they were to be around each other at school again when we came back. But admittedly, many students would drop out for no good reason — and there would be far too many families who would remove their children from school in order to make them work. And also far too many students who would be driven out of education by unjust treatment at the hands of racist or sexist or variously prejudicial and biased schools.

So here’s what we do about that.

Idea #2: Pay students to come to school.

When adults look to go back to finish an interrupted or shoddy education, pay them. Give them the chance to become more educated, more productive, and better citizens. When kids go to school and learn, pay their families. Want to give parents who don’t value education a reason to make sure their kids stay in school and learn? PAY THEM.

For too long we have relied on the abstract ideal of “Education is good” to serve as motivation for students to learn. It’s never worked well, as I can attest personally. It has fallen apart completely now: one of my classes told me, clearly and without hesitation, that they would rather underachieve and learn less, because it meant they would have to do less work. I asked them if it would shame them, make them feel stupid, if they did poor work; they said it would not. “Education is good” is not motivating. Because for most kids, it’s simply bullshit.

Bullshit walks. Money talks. Pay them.

We can talk about paying them more if they get good grades (Though I would also like to suggest we eliminate grades), but I think that allows for the possibility of corruption and kickbacks to teachers who will hand out As for profit. Simple attendance will be a good metric. If we also then give teachers and schools the genuine ability to remove students from the classroom, for discipline and behavior problems, or as a sort of wake-up call if they are not progressing — you know, “Stay home for a week and study more, then come back” — then there is an immediate financial incentive for the family to help solve the problem. This is currently lacking, and it’s part of the reason why schools are struggling: we do not have the support of parents any more. I want to say it’s because families don’t value education, but I suspect it’s simply because families are struggling.

So pay them. You want to say that capitalism and the free market are the key to innovation and motivation? Awesome: let’s put that theory to the test with schools.

Imagine if a single parent with two or three or four kids could actually earn a living wage just by going to school with their kids. By ensuring that their kids go to classes — which would be far easier if they were in the same building, or if they were close by in the local high school, or what have you. The whole family could sit down to do homework together, because everyone would be in the same boat, and everyone would have an incentive to study and improve in order to stay in school and continue earning the wage. If we extend this wage into community college, we could actually help people move out of minimum wage employment, without asking them to do the impossible by adding education to a full load of work and family needs; they could quit their jobs, or cut back hours, and go to school, for money. We could provide the bootstraps by which people could lift themselves up.

This is going on longer than I intended, and I suspect just these two ideas are enough for people to start thinking about (Hopefully nobody really needs to think about the need to achieve funding equity for every student in this nation, or the need to pay teachers more), but I want to make just one content/curriculum suggestion. Again, I have a thought for an overhaul of the entire system of subjects that we teach in schools; check my school plan post linked above; but there’s a more general suggestion I want to make before I close this up and post it.

Idea #3: Education For Life

As I said, the idea of education for education’s sake, while I happen to agree with it, as I believe that education is valuable for everyone in every circumstance, is too abstract and too disconnected from daily life to be motivating any longer. Schools and teachers need to accept this, and to adapt to the current view, which is: experience teaches better than school.

Now, that isn’t true. Experience does teach, surely, but it teaches very concretely, with two obvious downsides: one, it doesn’t allow for higher-level thinking, thinking outside the box, thinking of new ways to do something by drawing on areas of knowledge not obviously part of a specific endeavor — for example, my brother studied music composition in college, and then went to work as a computer programmer; his experience as a computer programmer, combined with his knowledge of music, is what made his current project possible: a new way to make and record electronic music. If he hadn’t studied music, he wouldn’t be able to do what he is doing now; his experience as a computer programmer would essentially only allow him to program computers. I have a dozen different areas of knowledge that I draw on to teach English: history and politics and economics and science and music and pop culture and role-playing games and so on. This argument combines with the second problem with experience as teacher: it takes time. Of course everything takes time, but learning ideas in a classroom, concepts from a book or the internet or what have you, and then extrapolating those ideas into specific circumstances, is a far more efficient and effective way to figure things out and get things done than simply to live through every circumstance once so you know what to do the second time. Everything I’ve said as examples of the value of education over experience could all be achieved through experience, of course — but that takes longer.

The third problem with experience as a teacher? It hurts more. Sure, you learn how to ride a bike by falling down; but learning from a textbook doesn’t scrape your knees and crack your skull. (I’m aware that riding a bike is not a good example of something that could be learned from a textbook, but the point is still valid. Learning from the school of hard knocks involves taking hard knocks; think of it as having to go through the pain of having a terrible boss, and being abused and put upon because you’re the new guy or the intern. Experience teaches you through suffering. School does not. At least, it doesn’t have to.)

All that being said, it is hard to see the value of learning the subjects we learn in school. Because we have no idea how they apply to life. And I don’t mean as students: teachers have no idea how most of our subjects apply to life. We know how we use them: we teach them. It’s important for us to know history and algebra and grammar. But when students ask the very fair and reasonable question “When are we ever going to need this?” we most often have to fall back on one of two answers: later on in your education, giving rise to that terrible lie we’ve all had thrown at us: “You’ll need this in middle school!” followed by “You’ll need to know this in high school!” followed by “Your professors in college will require this!” when the skill in question is writing in cursive, and actually none of us need that, ever.

Or the other answer: shut up. Learn it because I said so.

This has to change, too. Teachers have to actually figure out how the content and skills we teach translate to value in real life. We need to be able to justify it to our students, and to ourselves. And if we can’t justify it: we should stop teaching it — or at least stop requiring it. Frankly, higher math, much of history, several of the sciences, and quite a lot of literature should only be taught as electives. Unless, that is, we can find a way to connect it to the real world.

I think we can. I teach dystopian fiction because it connects to the real world. I teach argument because it is a necessary skill in the real world, and the same with rhetoric. I tell my students that the ability to read and understand poetry will be applicable in their lives: but that’s pretty much bullshit. But it’s bullshit only because I haven’t found a direct connection to the real world for the poetry I teach — because I haven’t tried. Could I find one? I think so, yeah.

I know where I would start looking. I have a friend who is a poet. I have another friend who is a lawyer, but who is a passionate devotee of poetry. I would ask them.

I would ask other people too: and then I would have those people come in to talk to my students about poetry and why poetry is useful for them. And I would take my students out to see them at their work, in their lives, and see where poetry — or algebra, or geometry, or computer science, or Spanish — is useful in the real world.

That’s the last thing we need to do. We need to stop allowing schools to turn into ivory towers. The separation between schools and the “real world,” as if schools are not in the real world, as if teachers and students are not real people, as if somehow the purpose of school is separate from the real world, is why people don’t trust the education system, and why students don’t care about learning: because they don’t see the point of learning stuff they don’t know when they will ever need. And that’s a fair criticism. It’s annoying as hell when they’re arguing with me about what I want to teach them, especially considering how much I love my subject; but it’s a fair point. The stuff I teach them should be useful, or else I shouldn’t teach it.

So I and other educators should work with the community. Bring people in to schools, bring students out of schools into the world. As much as possible. Field trips, guest speakers, guest teachers, internships, anything and everything. This goes back to the point about letting students leave school if they don’t want to be there: school is boring and feels pointless. So we need to make school more interesting, and to make sure that everyone involved knows the point. If we can talk to people in the community who can explain how they used what they learned in school, then not only will students see the actual value of learning something (And while that may be limited to the one specific engineer, say, who uses geometry every day, which would only interest students who want to be engineers — until we bring in the professional billiards player, who uses geometry in every shot. And the muralist, who uses geometry to plan out the project before putting paint on the wall. That’s why we have to bring in as much of the outside world as possible: to show the incredible variety of the world, and the people in it, and the countless ways that education can connect to it, and them. To show students those possibilities.), but also, teachers will see a new and interesting and current and vibrant way to teach the skill. We’ll have a reason to teach the skill, and not just because it’s in the required curriculum, or it’s on the test. Part of the reason school is boring is because teachers are boring, and it’s because we teach abstract skills for reasons we don’t even understand, and can’t even explain; that’s why we default to saying “You’ll need this in next year’s class,” or even worse, “Because it’s on the test!” We’ve forgotten the reason for education, and it’s destroying education. We do not educate people simply for the sake of education: we do it because education is how people get better at life. So let’s make use of that. As much as possible. For God’s sake: education is for life: so let’s bring life back into education.

Students need education. Everyone needs education. But we have to understand why people need education before we can give them the education they need. Maybe my ideas aren’t the way to get this done: but we have to do something.

Doing something will mean a lot of work — which is also why I deserve that raise, along with everyone else who takes on this task. But we have to fix the problem. And if we don’t, if we ignore the problem, then nothing we do will matter, because the whole system will collapse entirely. It’s already teetering. Parts are already falling off. We can keep applying ineffective bandaids — or we can try something new.

I say we try something new.

What do you think?