We Haven't Made the Sale!: 20 Analogies from a Teacher On the Problems in Public Education - And What We Can Do About It

By P.D. Meyerholz

We must recognize that public high school education in the United States has become dysfunctional. This book attempts to make the case that we must evaluate this breakdown within the larger context of present day American culture. The author offers a critique of schools from a managerial standpoint, and provides a few broad ideas on how schools can teach academics more effectively.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483571188

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Endnotes

Introduction

My daughter Carlie started middle school last September, and after her first day told her mother and me that students are instructed to walk quietly in the hallways while changing classes. Having just started in a new school and being a bit intimidated by her unfamiliar surroundings, of course she will comply. She would have anyway, because my daughter treats school with the reverence it deserves. Contrast this with Nijee, one of my senior U.S. Government students last year, my 34th and final year of high school teaching. Nijee is a polite young man, but he would often work against what I was trying to accomplish in class by doing things like deliberately flaunt the dress code, eat his breakfast in class, or get out of his seat on a whim. He and some other seniors in this required class were in effect communicating to me: This is your gig, not mine, and I’ve got no skin in your game.

It would obviously be a misrepresentation to claim that all 6th graders look at school the way Carlie does, or that all high school seniors are unconcerned with building their academic skills, like many of my students. However, there is clearly a trend line in that direction. The subject of this book is to assess what is going wrong with many of our students’ approach to their schooling as they move through our K-12 education system. The argument I will make is that we can only evaluate public education within the framework of our broader American culture.

I began teaching high school Social Studies in August 1979 at Orange County (VA) High School, after received a BA in Secondary Social Studies at the State University of New York – Cortland. After an unsuccessful but illuminating two year hiatus in the private sector, I returned to teaching at Princess Anne High School in Virginia Beach, VA on April Fool’s Day 1985, when a U.S. History teacher suddenly left for a job in a different field that she saw as a greener pasture. I transferred within Virginia Beach City Schools to Salem High School soon after it opened in 1989, where I taught mainly Government and Advanced Placement Government to senior students until I retired in June, 2015.

Along the way I earned a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Virginia, and an Education Specialist degree from the College of William & Mary. I am indebted to these institutions of higher learning for making me a better thinker and a better teacher.

I am gratified for having made public education teaching my career. Thank you, Mr. Markowitz and Mr. Burlington, for being sources of inspiration for me at Dobbs Ferry (NY) High School. It has always been as challenging a job as anyone would want to make it. In my early years on the job, I was a lousy teacher who thought I was good. In more recent years, I became a pretty good teacher, yet often thought I was lousy. I am convinced that over time I got much better at delivering subject matter, but was also becoming less effective for some of my students. It was a source of both amusement and frustration for me to think that I was getting both better and worse at the same time.

My guess is that my students will remember two things about their time in my class - one, the sarcasm I come by naturally as a native New Yorker and two, my liberal use of metaphors to get my students to better understand course concepts. While I hope I have kept my sarcasm in check, my intention in this book is to offer a collection of metaphors in an attempt to persuasively argue that we must look to our anti-educational culture as the prime culprit for what’s wrong with American public education.

I should clarify that my focus is at the high school level. The learning environment in the elementary schools of my two children was warm and nurturing, and most observers generally still see this as the case at that level. A colleague once shared with me a story of how much his kindergarten son enjoyed learning by cutting out pictures of objects that begin with a specific letter and bringing them into class. We then both sighed wistfully, in shared bemusement of wondering what happens along the way to turn many enthusiastic kindergarteners into apathetic 12th graders. I didn’t know it at the time, but in that moment was the genesis of this book.

I do not mean to suggest that highly functioning public high schools don’t exist. I do believe, however, that we can and should come to a general conclusion that there is widespread dysfunctionality in the high school learning environment, and those of us who know this to be true should speak up about it.

I am writing in the fall of 2015, and the presidential campaign season is well under way even though the election is still about a year away. Recently I read that a candidate was asked, Which is the greater threat to America - ISIS or the present state of K-12 public education? The candidate used this question as an opportunity to rail against the high level of government education spending per pupil, and observed that we weren’t getting enough bang for the buck. While not necessarily wrong, this answer indicates a lack of understanding of the complexity of the current problems in public education. We have a quiet crisis in American education, and it must be critiqued within the broader framework of 21st century American culture. With electronic distractions everywhere, it has never been tougher to sell our young people on the idea that hard academic work over time is the ticket to an enriched and rewarding life. It is my contention that the core of our education problem today is that we are not making this sale.

There are 20 essays in this book, each with a metaphor as an organizing principle. I found this to be an effective way to make Social Studies concepts understandable to my students. For example, each year I asked them if they had ever seen a boa constrictor eat a hamster. (Rarely would anyone answer that they had, and the truth is I never have either.) At this point I always had their attention. I then described the process