Kafkaesque: complicated, confusing, and threatening
From the name of the Czech-German writer Franz Kafka. For the characters in Kafka’s novels, the world seems mysterious and unfriendly, and it becomes very difficult to achieve things.
--- Macmillan Online Dictionary http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/Kafkaesque
Schools are designed and implemented to protect our youth and prepare them for the outside world. One of my mentor teachers haughtily claimed that he treated his class like the "real world." If nothing else, school is nothing like the real world. Unlike the commerce of daily life in our widely dispersed yet interconnected world, in schools children are shuffled off from one class to another according to age or some other label that has been slapped on them.
Students who do not pay attention in class, who talk back to their teachers, who show defiance in the face of leadership: those students can be shuffled off to special ed classes. There, they are accommodated to act up even more, and they can hide behind the illness that has been slapped upon them.
Yet even if students are not sequestered away from the general ed population, students endure harm and abuse in an unprecedented scale. Teachers berate students. Students harass each other. The dynamics of groupthink and clique take over in full force. Psychologists have confirmed time and again that students who do not "fit in" during their high schools years stand a much better chance of integrating and excelling in the world.
Schools are not safe places, not just for the students, but also for the teachers. As administrators are pressed from district officials to keep student enrollment up, teachers have no power when it comes to disciplining or removing unruly students. Teachers are supposed to be in charge of their classroomss, but increasingly it has become the students are in charge. Teacher bullying has now become an acceptable pass-time for students, since they know that teachers have no recourses left for dealing with unruly students.
Teachers are responsible for teaching their students, yet the students are not held accountable when it comes to their behavior, aside from coming to class on time. Most students have received at least one ticket from an on-campus police officer for tardiness, which actually punishes the parents more than the students. If more students were held to answer in front of a judge or a police officer for miscreant misconduct, I am certain that more students would start to behave in class, too.
Schools are supposed to be safe places, but increasingly, they are not. In fact, on some campuses students will not even leave without a group of students to accompany them.
The rules in place that are purported to protect everyone only protect the students. . . from being disciplined. This is an awful trend, one that deprives students of much-needed direction in their lives, as more students are being raised by parents who have not grown up themselves.
Schools look stable on the outside. On the inside, they can be riotous and dissolute places. In come classes, students have not even had a full-time teacher. Most parents have no idea what is going on in their children's schools. Teacher misconduct, if recorded, is hardly reported. Students in many cases do not feel safe, not just because of incompetent or difficult teachers, but even worse because of students who harass them all over the campus. As for the administrators, they are more concerned with maintaining the status quo of raking in the attendance money and keeping problems mum as long as possible.
Schools are threatening places for parents who have bad memories of school. How many parents, I wonder, regretted having to go to school because they feared getting taunted or harassed by a teacher or another set of students. The breakdown of law, order, and respect on public school campuses has completely compromised the learning process for students, those who behave, and definitely those who have no other interest than to stir up trouble.
Students who do not pay attention in class, who talk back to their teachers, who show defiance in the face of leadership: those students can be shuffled off to special ed classes. There, they are accommodated to act up even more, and they can hide behind the illness that has been slapped upon them.
Yet even if students are not sequestered away from the general ed population, students endure harm and abuse in an unprecedented scale. Teachers berate students. Students harass each other. The dynamics of groupthink and clique take over in full force. Psychologists have confirmed time and again that students who do not "fit in" during their high schools years stand a much better chance of integrating and excelling in the world.
Schools are not safe places, not just for the students, but also for the teachers. As administrators are pressed from district officials to keep student enrollment up, teachers have no power when it comes to disciplining or removing unruly students. Teachers are supposed to be in charge of their classroomss, but increasingly it has become the students are in charge. Teacher bullying has now become an acceptable pass-time for students, since they know that teachers have no recourses left for dealing with unruly students.
Teachers are responsible for teaching their students, yet the students are not held accountable when it comes to their behavior, aside from coming to class on time. Most students have received at least one ticket from an on-campus police officer for tardiness, which actually punishes the parents more than the students. If more students were held to answer in front of a judge or a police officer for miscreant misconduct, I am certain that more students would start to behave in class, too.
Schools are supposed to be safe places, but increasingly, they are not. In fact, on some campuses students will not even leave without a group of students to accompany them.
The rules in place that are purported to protect everyone only protect the students. . . from being disciplined. This is an awful trend, one that deprives students of much-needed direction in their lives, as more students are being raised by parents who have not grown up themselves.
Schools look stable on the outside. On the inside, they can be riotous and dissolute places. In come classes, students have not even had a full-time teacher. Most parents have no idea what is going on in their children's schools. Teacher misconduct, if recorded, is hardly reported. Students in many cases do not feel safe, not just because of incompetent or difficult teachers, but even worse because of students who harass them all over the campus. As for the administrators, they are more concerned with maintaining the status quo of raking in the attendance money and keeping problems mum as long as possible.
Schools are threatening places for parents who have bad memories of school. How many parents, I wonder, regretted having to go to school because they feared getting taunted or harassed by a teacher or another set of students. The breakdown of law, order, and respect on public school campuses has completely compromised the learning process for students, those who behave, and definitely those who have no other interest than to stir up trouble.
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