A cup of coffee

If I were given the opportunity to design a school, I would have lots of good models to look at, few of them public. This isn’t because the intermingling of the classes is a failure, nor is it the result of the intermixing of students of different abilities. It’s because we have stopped caring. Maybe we never did care.
People often point to the fact that Horace Mann was shocked by the violence, and particularly, the fires caused by juvenile delinquents and that is why he became interested in public schools. When I read about the teaching of speech and theater especially, I find rationales rooted in a need for order or of the training of those who will create order – lawyers and priests. Americans are an anti-intellectual group perhaps because our intellectual class was envisioned as a set of pedantic rulers by some of our earliest thinkers on education. I know, instantly, fans of John Dewey are going to clamor. But, think about it: Dewey wanted everything, including art to be functional. Even in his schools, the idea of pure fun was never raised.
We spend about 8 or 9 thousand dollars per pupil here in NYC -- and at BCNHS the average is much lower. That’s less than a car and nowhere near a year’s rent. It’s almost two hundred dollars a week. In NY, that’s about what it costs to get around town: 27 dollar weekly metrocard, 40 dollars worth of groceries, 28 dollars worth of fancy coffee drinks, 20 dollars for laundry and dry cleaning and 20 dollars for two nights of take-out or take-out and a movie. So, our kids are not worth more than our weekly expenses. And, I low-balled it except for the coffee drinks. We eat out a lot here because we have so little time.
We take cabs, too. The most expensive commodity here is time and we try to fill it with as much as we can until we are energy-less. On the Staten Island Ferry, people stand at the tip of the boat where it doesn’t feel like such a slow ride.
Are we sacrificing our future – our children’s time – for our own? Am I spending less as a taxpayer on my students than I do on my life because I am selfish. Or angry. Or because I am not paying attention.
Every time I take a cab, I know that is money I need for my cats. Do I know it’s also money I need for my students?
Now, to be fair, AS A TEACHER, I spend a lot of my own money on the kids. Why should I be spending it and not their parents, their uncles and aunts?
Should I be blamed, too, when the lack of funds is an obstacle to my work?
Quick, get me a coffee drink!