What is Superman?

1) An idea in an essay by Nietzche.
2) Part of the title of a play by George Bernard Shaw actually about Don Juan.
3) A comic book character that more than one writer has suggested was an expression of Jewish angst against the Nazis.
4) The prototypical dream of the prototypical geek.
5)A role in a movie portrayed by, among others, the late actor Christopher Reeve and first played on television by George Reeves (no relation.)
6) The fictive construct who is the boyfriend of fictive construct Lois Lane.
7) Whatever the big "S" symbol conjures up in the 3-46 year olds who wear it on a t-shirt.
8)The title of a Barbara Streisand album.
9) Probably as many things as there are meanings to the number "3" in Mozart's The Magic Flute.

None of these qualifies him to save our educational system. In fact, the metaphor behind the title of the new documentary, Waiting for Superman suggests we give the schools over to Disney. Then we can REALLY LIE to the children.

I'm 42 and I've seen more movies about educational saviors than I can count -- most of whom taught or served as a school leader for not much more than a year (Look up how long the real life model for Dangerous Minds taught.) None of them had much longevity. The saddest to me will always be Frank Mickens who was the big hero at Boys and Girls High School when I was just beginning to teach. Mickens left and...the school as a 37 percent graduation rate despite the fact that it's motto is "Failure is not an option." Thomas Jefferson had a flash in the pan as a military style academy. Gone. Brooklyn Comprehensive had a formidable leader and it died shortly after she did. Institutions are not built by personalities nor are they rescued by them, though they can make them famous. Maybe it is the constant influx of personality that keeps The Metropolitan Opera going...but people don't fork over three figures for tickets unless the show is something to see and hear. And the place has survived geniuses and idiots at the helm. I think it requires a commitment to work to go beyond the ugly, but not to let the mistakes define you. Our Dept. of Ed. does nothing but let the mistakes change their minds -- they continue what is an American tradition.

Our Secretary of Education says that the new documentary Waiting for Superman does the equivalent of "calling a baby ugly." The underlying reference to the youth of public education in the US, I think is not really at the core of his response, though I wish it were so. I wish he could look at the historical approach to public education in this country and set his work in context of it, building upon progressive ideas which have often been quickly abandoned when other ideas became fashionable. That's my prejudice. Accepting that, as the students say, "all he's trying to say is," is that there are some ugly parts of our school system, then this movie does nothing new. When a country cannot even decide WHY it's educating it's children, you can't expect it to know WHAT to do. Ask our secretary why I have colleagues working in schools that have no gyms, no computers and in some cases not even a basketball. IN 2010. In, what my grandmother called, "America." This at the same time as students who just happen to score better on some tests than others have brand new equipment of all kinds and a pool. Yet, Stuyvesant students can no longer be called an elite group because that would mean that we understood them to be part of some larger whole. What goes on in Stuyvesant (Class of 85, here) is NOTHING like what my colleagues and I are allowed to do with or without equipment. Students are driven to meet expectations because they have an understanding of the pressures of the world and because...they JUST LIKE TO LEARN. Every kid just likes to learn, but only at some schools do they have the equipment and the CARE and I do mean "TLC" to be able to do it. Most NY students have one guidance counselor to 500 kids. I saw a counselor, a SPARK officer, a psychiatrist and had therapy at Beth Israel hospital when my family experienced an enormous crisis. Do you know any student in NYC anywhere else who would be granted that attention? Spark offices get cut routinely AT THE MIDDLE SCHOOL LEVEL. Who doesn't need counseling more than a middle school student?

It's not any one ugly decision that makes our schools the way they are. It's that we make NO DECISIONS at all. We refuse outright to commit to anything for our children. If I had a child and then left him/her outdoors to fen for himself/herself from infancy, it would be the same crime. We ask students who have difficulty reading to choose into a Pre-Law, Pre-Med or Pre-Nothing program. But, we will not give them Special Education services. God forbid we stigmatize them with the possibility of what amounts to healthcare. For free? The fact that students in some suburbs get as much assistance as they need and their parents are willing to cough up the funds in taxes eludes most of the public. Even our President, who went to Columbia and Harvard and spends private school money on his kids PRETENDS he doesn't know what the cost of a good education is. EVERYONE deserves a private school education. Taking on the commitment and the flexibility of mind of private schools requires crediting teachers and administrators with an ability to define what learning is. We'd also have to make some serious investments in technology, buildings, counseling, etc.

Ah, but we'd have to pay for it. And we'd have to support it as a culture.

What we have done instead is placed the UFT/AFT at the new forefront of the attack against unions which has been progressively seething in this country, with its signal moment being President Reagan's firing of the Patco workers. Teachers have become thrust into a stereotype of civil servants which was never really true. When you decide to become a civil servant (which as Mario Cuomo would point out, includes politicians) you exchange a long-term commitment to a job for a less competitive payscale. You also wed yourself to the way that institution works. It's not like a Senator could walk into the Israeli Knesset or British Parliament and just pick up where he left off. While institutions don't survive on the back of one person alone, they do develop their own methodologies unique to their own surroundings. Anyway, because I have insurance and my summer's off I am now the poster-child for American Sloth. Why aren't all of my students getting 90's? Did all students ever get 90's. At schools where the competition is very still, an artificial curve is built in to insure that NOT EVERYONE gets 90's. This is unfair because some of these students could get 100's at easier places. But, there is an inherent value to the 85 which isn't there in the 100 somewhere else. And, besides, you know, you get a better education, or one more suited to a pace you enjoy. On the Yankees, does everyone hit 300? How many times do the Angels have to beat the Yankees to prove that excellence comes in many forms? You send your child to a school because their way of doing things seems like it would work best for him/her. My mother scored right on the money and she barely made more than minimum wage. She asked people she knew who graduated from the school and she made a few visits. I could have survived nowhere else the way I did at that small, idiosyncratic Hebrew school which then lead me to Stuyvesant. My mother is seriously ill and yet, the fine education she received back in the dark ages when people didn't take as many Regents, etc. prepared her to do this for me. That, and a mother who brought with her a European devotion to learning for its own sake. (What other person would still know her Latin in her 60's.) What makes education good is a willingness to be open-minded, to be dedicated, to be unique to the needs of your students and to care. If Randi Weingarten or any other UFT/AFT person seems to froth at the mouth (as she is described doing in this upcoming documentary) it is because no one should have to spend so much time proving the value of something which is done entirely in support of children. If I choose not to work summer school, it isn't because I'm a lazy sloth -- it's because I've broken my back and I need rest for the next round. Most teachers I know are broke most of the time, supplementing their classrooms with what is not there. The computers, the media projectors, the memberships in educational groups which share information, etc. And we don't have credit cards supplied by our company. It's not even easy to deduct this stuff. Not that it pays to think about it. You do your best, you give everything you can. Or, why stand up at all. Especially, when you are vilified just for having a pension. More teachers go on disability than any other group of workers. The statistics are too broad and consistent for all of these people to have genetic predilections to breaking down.

I have an acquaintance who gathers all the discarded math textbooks from our schools and sends them to Kenya where they are SAVORED and used again and again. But, no one should ever have to be so hungry in the first place to have to be given a discarded textbook. The fact that people in other countries know the value of an education and we do not, is a testimony to one of the greatest American products: Ignorance. The idea that a cartoon character can save the world is as naive and pathetic as the terrified young men and women who had to look to the funny papers when the world turned its face on the crushing of 11 million people, 6 million of them Jews. Who would want to watch the news when Roosevelt turned away boats of Jews, even as he slowly began to concede that we would have to enter the war. I don't hate Roosevelt. He wasn't a cartoon character. He was a human. When he died, he left enough in place so that the very capable Harry Truman could make a decision no one should ever have to make again. He said he never lost a night's sleep over it. I don't believe him, but I understand that sometimes one must stand by one's decisions, especially ones that hard. At the end of the war, a number of veterans got together and founded The International Baccalaureate so that there would be a curriculum that would bring humanity together. The trouble is, you have to be able to read to use it. And you have to be of liberal enough mind to see the value of a project over a standardized test. You have to test the project and the performer in real terms -- in context of the world around it, both local and global. That's a lot of work. And very little of it is QUANTIFIABLE. But to admit that good work cannot always be measured in an exact rubric and has to be valued with intelligence and compassion, would be to admit that comprehension involves not just the ability to read the text but the subtext and what it might foreshadow. All of that takes time, experience and care. It's not the job of one person, but the effort of the whole. And, it's ain't cheap. Some people look at children in uniforms and see students ready to learn. I see children being primed to serve. I want my children to have TASTE. Now, that alone, giving the student the time and energy to learn to choose his clothes, is something we won't commit to anymore.

If they can't choose their clothes, and they all are following Superman, they will do very well working in retail. I'm afraid most of the students I have met would do better than I would in that field, already. They know how to sell and wear someone else's name on their backs. What I want is to teach them to stand on their own, follow their conscience, and read the fine print.

Perhpas, "I love the Funnies" should be the theme song for our school system. Never heard of it? Well, look it up.