Moral Education

I have been fuming all weekend long about the shootings of the eighteen innocent civilians by a young, deranged gunman.  Investigators have been turning this kid's life upside down to determine whether he acted alone, what his reasons for this outburst were, whether there's some conspiracy.  The reason I am fuming is because all of this could be prevented with a little common sense.

It's all summed up in one word: education.  Education has been receiving a radical make over for quite some time now.  Some of it is good, a lot of it is not.  For example, for the last two years I have had to listen to a certain pedagogical "expert" during mandated seminars.  His contention is that 1. homework should be abolished, 2. daily work should count for no percentage of a student's grade, and 3. the only thing that matters is how well a student does on a test.  There are a few issues I need to take with this.  Please be patient and I will get to the point I made in the first paragraph.

1. Homework- he claimed that homework was basically a waste of a student's time.  I don't feel that way.  Though I have largely eliminated homework, I still assign some because students need extra practice to master a concept.  Fifty-five minute periods don't allow for as much learning time as is needed.  Also, when a student is assigned homework, he must make a decision: learn the content or X Box.  Too often X Box wins out, which is a problem unto its own.  Students need to learn the value of hard work.

2. Formative v. Summative Assessments- I agree that the purpose of homework and other daily assignments are to "form" the student's mind, and tests, or summative assignments, grade what a student knows.  The problem is that students will get away with anything they can.  If there is no grade attached, they feel less value attached to the assignment and are more apt to hit the X Box.  There's an obvious problem in this from a "teach them how to act in the real world" scenerio. 

Then there's the idea that students should be allowed to retest as many times as they want until they "get it right."  Essentially, that it doesn't matter if they master the information in September or May, but that they master the information before the end of the year so that they can promote to the next grade.  If this is the case, then the final exam should be the only test that matters, right?  I want to give students ample chances to learn the work, but this policy has created laziness.  I have students ask me, "Can I retake this test?" before they even take it the first time!  My dad always told me to do something right the first time.  Many times a student wants to see the test and then try to remember where the answers went on the second try.  What is this teaching them?  How many bosses want a worker who doesn't want to do things right the first time?  Education is a break from the real world, a chance to make mistakes and learn from mistakes, but at what point does education draw the line and say, "Enough is enough.  Young man, it's time for you to mature?"

3. Teaching to the test- these four words were as bad as four-letter cuss words when I first entered the teaching profession over ten years ago.  The idea is that some company makes a standardized test, the state adopts the test as the scale by which we mark achievement, then the students have to do well on it.  The problem is that it all revolvs around money.  Districts are told that "no child may be left behind" and hence all students have to score proficient or money will be taken away, and teachers and administrators will be fired.  Those in charge of the districts then put the pressure on the teachers to make sure the students have all the information they need to do well on the test.

This puts teachers in a peculiar situation.  Do they teach only the information that they know will be on the test, even if other skills should also be taught, or do they teach these other skills also and hope for the best?  More and more everything else gets thrown out the window, and this includes moral education.  Some refer to it as character education, and there's a difference.

I can already hear some parents saying, "How dare you choose to place your own morals on my child!  What gives you the right?"  I understand this sentiment.  I would not want another teacher pushing his set of values on my children.  But there's a problem in this.  Many of my students in the last dozen years have a home life in which their parents, say, are at the casino all night and sleep in all day.  The most important duty a parent has is to his or her children- bringing them up to know right from wrong.  When this strong parental figure is missing in a student's life, traditionally the church has picked up the slack.  If all else failed, teachers took over. 

Unfortunately those who believe that the Constitution of the United States is a living document have argued that the separation of church and state means keeping Christianity out of the classroom when our founding fathers didn't imply this at all.  Character education trys to instill the concepts of love and peace in our students but fail miserably because love and peace are the cornerstones of Christ's ministry.  Essentially you can't give someone something that you don't have.  Education can't teach love if it doesn't know what love is.  God is love.

Forsaking the church's role in education has led to a break down of the last line of moral defense.  When we as educators look only to teach quadratic equations and pronouns, the students only receive these concepts, and not a primer in living life the right way. 

What morals did the shooter possess?  Who taught him right from wrong?  Now I don't pretend to know the shooter's background, but I think I can safely assume that he is a product of our current system.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Why reinvent the wheel?

God help us.