Teaching at the Margin of the United States

Once again, I find Mr. John Polley's comments on the devolution of public education too compelling to read without requisite response.

Like Mr. Polley, I have served as a visiting tutor in a number of communities and homes. Students and circumstances throughout Los Angeles resemble some of the conspicuous encounters which Mr. Polley faced while tutoring.

It is staggering and defeating, the dysfunction and poverty which I encountered in my weekly trips to tutor deprived youth. Based on scores from the tsunami of state and federal standardized tests, these students were pegged as "Below Basic" or "Far Below Basic" in math and reading. These bureaucratic hurdles, intended to hold public schools accountable, have merely goaded school officials to plug more precious time and resources toward selecting the correct answer out of four from factoid-like questions. These nullities fail to prepare young people for the real world, where choices reach varying extremes of consequence and conflict, or worse, must be defined before being chosen. Such freedom is presently a condemnation for youth, who are taught to value themselves because of their race or background, all while learning in Bio class that they are descendants of chimps and apes. I am hardly surprised that students are bored, turned off, and tune out very quickly in class.

Hired by a private company financed by state subsidy, I tutored clients who lived in dingy apartments with flies swirling menacingly over unswept filth. Neighbors blaring obnoxious polka music, airplanes flying fast and furious overhead, parents fighting, live-in boyfriends: these degradations the students and I endured time and again, a gauntlet of disruptions which revealed to me the personal struggles which students privately bring into their classrooms every day.

For the most part, the students were wonderful people who wanted to learn something. They enjoyed the individual attention of a tutor; the parents liked having free tutoring, provided by the state. Of course, some parents were curt, demanding, and just plain rude. After some sessions, I wondered how these children would fare in a world where daily they dealt with the dysfunction of parents who were still thinking and acting like youth themselves.

After a year of this mad dash from one home to another to amass adequate pay, I finally resigned in a huff. Fed up with parents who were more intent on my waving a magic wand to transform a failing student into a genius (all the while refusing to guide their children into adulthood), I decided to return to day-to-day substitute teaching in the local schools.

"Teaching at the Margin" in Los Angeles revealed to me the true plight facing many youth: not just poor parenting and dangerous communities, but an impoverished political culture dedicated to the status quo of the failed public school monopoly. If children cannot at least choose where they get to be educated, then what hopes do they have for getting an adequate training to take on the harsh verities of life? Deep down, many students want something more from their schooling, but at the moment many students have very few places where they can go and receiving the preparation they need.

I am not cynical or resigned to a possible fate of permanent poverty for adolescents in Los Angeles. The rise of charter schools, coupled with the abject academic and financial bankruptcy of traditional public schools, has shaken the voters enough to demand something better for their tax dollars and something better for the students. I know and believe that I can still be a part of showing children that there is something better for them outside of the margins where they are currently living. I just hope that enough people, parents and students included, take the time to do more than settle for what they already have.