Wayward Expectations

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There are few things more toxic and degenerating to the success of human potential than errant expectations. I especially see it sickening the atmosphere of our public school system.

Before I expound further on this matter, please note that I am by no means blaming any one group of people. There are always exceptions. However, the links that need to be secured in the chain of events that lead our children from learning their ABC’s to becoming productive contributors to society has quite a few missing links.

As an on-site PTO volunteer in my children’s school for the past two years, I have seen some great demonstrations of true, noble educational instruction; not just academically, but in character development as well. My hat goes off to anyone who can blossom as an effective educator in the climate of today’s public schools.However, there is notable frustration in all facets that feed into our children’s learning experience.

There are school district higher-ups that are apparently more interested in looking good on paper than they are the human beings  that are affected by their chasing of achievement status. I have witnessed the depleting morale of even the most seasoned teachers because of the unrealistic expectations of school board policies and procedures, as well as parents who don’t bother to engage in helping their children learn. They are sending children to school late, leaving important notices and forms from the school unchecked inside their child’s backpacks for weeks, yet complaining that the school never tells them anything, and taking no active role at all in establishing a consistent order at home that would promote the emotional and social health of their own child. I see school administrators showing the strain of dealing with despondent, sometimes uncooperative employees, disgruntled and argumentative parents, overbearing school board bosses, and dwindling budgets. I see children who seem to collectively suffer from a kind of “mental malaise” from being driven to perform like show ponies to keep the numbers up on a myriad of reports to prove how “exemplary” the school academic climate is via the questionably reliable standardized tests that are relentlessly shoved at them most of the nine months that they occupy a desk in a classroom. I see teachers who lament almost on a daily basis that the job itself has either become far less fulfilling than it used to be, or not what they expected it to be at all. They seem to feel more like overworked and underpaid paper-pushers than educators.