Fitting that the rant fall on 187, the murder code in the California penal system. I’m dealing with murderous anger at the condition of education in general. What ever happened to learning? It feels so much now that people are entering the CC system looking for a fast and cheap way to University and often entering University looking for a fast and cheap way to a career. Nobody wants to learn for the sake of learning. Nobody wants to be in a class and get anything out of it outside of grade. This seems especially true in the CC system where a long history of stereotyping has led to the assumption that the teachers are either less-than or simply don’t care.
I’m angry, in part, because that is slowly becoming true. I don’t know if it were always true and I ignored it in my Talis-bubble or if it is becoming the reality based on shifting demographics and citizen needs. I can’t be sure of any of this, but there is one certainty–learning is an afterthought. Being seen as ‘someone’ appears to live in the forefront of most people’s minds and imaginations.
I absolutely hope to turn this into topics for a story. I feel there is a lot of stuff here that can be gleaned both about learners and about education much in the way the book, Moo, was produced. That was back in Iowa and as of late I’ve remembered (abre los ojos?) that Arizona is the combination of a certain type of Iowan and certain type of New Yorker who moved here to get a fresh start. I’m not ignoring the South American and California influences, but the root–the base is what I articulated above. That is really just an aside and another tick in the column of how much there is to unpack about this time and place.
All of this is to say that I’ve been forced to shift the way I think about work and the workplace. I’ve been forced to reevaluate the way I think about the classroom and my role. I feel like this is going to have to be a conversation at the start of every semester, because what I’m trying to accomplish and what the students want are not necessarily the same thing.
Apparently they never have been.