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Category Archives: Education

It’s the Parents, Stupid

16 Feb

I read this post on Jupdi Blogs and thought, “Bull Shit!”  It’s too easy to blame American teachers when kids don’t learn. When our daughter was a senior in a public high school, she had maybe two bad teachers in the thirteen years she’s been in school.

I heard our daughter’s complaints, so I know.

She also had many good teachers. So, explain how she managed to earn nothing but As and a 4.66 GPA then be accepted to Stanford where she’s now a student.

She was also ranked in the top 4% for her graduating class and was guaranteed acceptance at the University of California, Davis. How did she do that?

It’s the parents, stupid, and the real problem is a culture that looks for scapegoats. It’s not a few bad teachers.

In every profession, there are workers that do a poor job and teaching is no different. When there is a poor teacher, instead of complaining, do what we did—teach your child at home or hire a tutor for that subject.

Three professions suffer from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) — combat soldiers, public school teachers and airport flight controllers. The real problem is often the stress caused from parents with attitudes like the author of the post at Jupdi Blogs.

Discover Having Sex With Elephants

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

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Posted by on February 16, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, Parenting, Public School, Reading, Teaching

 

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The Raptor and the Rats

15 Feb

One of the raptors ratted me out, and Grendel called me to his office to sizzle me in his hot seat. He yelled at me for going against Sauron’s orders. He moved closer until I could smell the dead flesh of vulchers and cigarettes on his breath.  He demanded that I admit guilt. I suspected the motive was grade inflation.

I stared at his jugular wondering how fast it would take to tear it out with my teeth. Like Beowulf, I wanted to destroy the monster. To my dismay, as my PTSD was getting ready to launch, the VP, who was there to witness this interrogation, stepped forward and stopped us. 

I think she saw the hunger in my eyes.

After school, she came into the teacher’s lounge, as I was getting ready to leave campus.  We were alone.  She looked around with a tense expression and made sure the hall leading to the staff lounge was empty.

Then she leaned closer and whispered. “You were right.”  And she quit a few weeks later to accept a position in another school district abandoning us to the beast.

Damn! Talk about the rats leaving the ship. Soon, teachers started clambering down the ropes to escape.

Part three of three
Back to part one

See more about Grendel here.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart.

 
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Posted by on February 15, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, English, Literature, Public School, Reading, Teaching

 

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Teaching or Writing with Pain, Pollution and People – Part 2/4

14 Feb

When I left the office to find a moment of peace, I covered the computer and printers with a bed sheet. The noise reminded me of combat but worse, because I was nineteen and then twenty when I was in Vietnam—noise did not bother me as it does now.

Concrete dust floated through the air and my sinuses and lungs rebelled, so I put on a 3M mask with two pink HEPA filters attached.

The last time I wore a mask like this was when I was teaching.

I searched the garage and found a noise suppresser to slip over my ears and it helped mute the pounding and drilling.

I looked like an explorer on Mars or a survivor of trench warfare struggling to write while the frigid air froze my fingers.

The crew had arrived to bolster the foundation against future earthquakes that might never arrive. Even if a hard tumbler did visit, I doubt that all that work would hold our sixty-year old hillside house together. It still might slide down the hill into the middle of the street blocking traffic.

Continued in Teaching or Writing with Pain, Pollution and People – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

 
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Posted by on February 14, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, pollution, Public School, Teaching

 

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Teaching or Writing with Pain, Pollution and People – Part 1/4

14 Feb

It’s difficult to teach or write when I’m gasping for air and exploding my sinus.

When I was still teaching (1975 – 2005) there were years when walking into the empty classroom in the morning made me sick—and no, I wasn’t allergic to my students.

Then I retired from teaching (but not from life), and I have been free of wheezy lungs and sinus infections that always arrived with the start of each school year when I worked in those old buildings at the high school where I taught. Have you heard of sick building syndrome?

I lived it.

This new, peaceful world changed when workers came with power tools and mud-caked boots.

I should have fled, but I stayed at my computer as a stupid, stubborn, former United States Marine would.

My office has three doors. One that leads to to rest of the house and one that opens to the outside.

Then there is the door that opens to the space under the second story.

Once under the house, that crew drilled into the foundation, pounded, cut and tracked dirt from room to room—always in my office.

I had trouble concentrating. I suffered memory loss. Plastic tarps covered most of the furniture, and I couldn’t find things.

Continued in Teaching or Writing with Pain, Pollution and People – Part 2

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

 
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Posted by on February 14, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, pollution, Public School, Teaching

 

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The Self-Esteem Train Wreck

13 Feb

It was in the 1980s, when we were told to throw out the grammar books and stop teaching from them. I blame this on the self esteem movement—a blunder equal to the invasion of Iraq or the Vietnam War or Anzio in World War II or Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up or John F. Kennedy allowing the Bay of Pigs Invasion that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis or Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

“Throw out the books”, they said—and Hitler lit his match. But on the sly, we defied Sauron and Grendel. Most English teachers hid sets of Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition.

Every Friday, thirty minutes before class let out, I took out Warriner’s and went over the lesson for homework that weekend. It was always short and on Monday, the answers were posted on the board so the kids could check their work during roll before turning it in.

I thought I was being clever and had no idea that a storm was brewing.

Discover Stealth Grammar – Orders from Sauron

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition].

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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Posted by on February 13, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, Public School, Reading, Teaching

 

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Stealth Grammar arrived thanks to orders from Sauron

13 Feb

The Whole Language approach to teaching English was another magic bullet in public education that misfired. California’s educational system suffered horribly from this blunder. The theory was that the more a child reads on their own, the more the child learns.

However, children watch – on average – several hours of TV daily, and more than forty percent are latch-key children. Most of these soda-drinking sugar heads would not read even with a loaded gun to their heads. But for the Whole Language program to work, the children had to read at last thirty minutes every night on their own.

Grendel’s boss was Sauron from Mordor (Grendel and Sauron are anonymous names that represent real administrators). This latest magic bullet—The Whole Language approach to teaching English—probably came from him since most magic bullets for public education come from micro-managers like him. You’ll hear more about Sauron in a few other posts. He even appears in my memoir as Mr. Insert.

Anyway, Grendel ordered the English teachers to stop teaching grammar, mechanics, vocabulary and spelling, and this led to some of us teaching stealth grammar until Grendel recruited students as spies to catch us.

Sauron lived up to the nom de plume I’ve given him. Anyone that worked in Rowland Unified School District at that time probably knows who I’m talking about. He may even have had a Palantir, one of the seeing stones from The Lord of the Rings, to keep an eye on his administrators and teachers making sure they were doing things the way he wanted. During my thirty years of teaching in that school district, I often heard from staff that nothing was done without Sauron’s approval. The principals probably had to ask permission to visit a bathroom.

Now here’s the thing—teachers are blamed for every alleged failure in public education, and many of these so-called failures are manufactured. They are based on lies and fraud. For instance, teachers are lazy, teachers are incompetent and so one. But how could the failure of Whole Language be blamed on the teachers? Teachers protested. They knew it wouldn’t work. They knew that teachers had to keep teaching grammar. A decade later, Whole Language was quietly dropped, and teachers were told to start teaching grammar again but most of the textbooks had been recycled against the common sense and warnings of teachers–who are seldom if ever listened to by those at the top who know it all.

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

Honorable Mention in Biography/Autobiography at 2014 Southern California Book Festival

Crazy-is-Normal-a-classroom-expose-200x300

His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on February 13, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, Parenting, Public School, Reading, Teaching

 

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Failing by Half

12 Feb

At the end of the school year, the principal asked why half the kids I was teaching were failing. Easy answer. They didn’t work. Half the boys were hyperactive. James was either spinning like a top or picking fights. Hardly any of the kids did homework. Most the boys failed miserably and everyone was below reading level except a few of the girls.

I suspect that the word hyperactive is one of those words that political correctness disapproves of. Calling a kid hyperactive was replaced with ADHD, because it doesn’t sound as negative. Boosting self-esteem means changing words even if they mean the same thing. I never did agree with the self-esteem movement.

The principal said a fifty-percent fail rate was unacceptable. I refused to lower my standards so kids that hadn’t worked would be given passing grades. The principal wrote in my annual evaluation that he was not recommending me for a full-time position, because I hadn’t learned to be a team member.

USO Show, Chu Lai, Vietnam - 1966

I wouldn’t see Marshall Kahan for several years. The next time we met, I would be teaching at Alvarado Intermediate with Grendel as the principal. Marshall had transferred from Romier looking for a school without razor wire and bullet holes in the doors.

See Grendels Closed Door Policy

 
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Posted by on February 12, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, Parenting, Public School, substitute teaching, Teaching

 

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Explosive Father

11 Feb

I took a step away from James’s father and moved behind the desk. While keeping an eye on him, I started looking for objects I could use as a weapon.

Lloyd Lofthouse at least ten feet underground in the comm bunker (Chu Lai, Vietnam - 1966).

The reading specialist appeared along with Marshall. They’d heard the yelling. After stopping the father’s tirade, the reading specialist explained that I was not responsible for assigning the book to James.

The specialist then took James’s father to his office. There was no apology for the outburst and the insults. I had discovered where James’s anger came from. He’d inherited or learned it from his explosive father.

I wondered where the father had been for most of the semester. I’d called the house a number of times and left messages. He had not attended parent conferences. In fact, I contacted all the parents when homework wasn’t turned in. I spent hours on the phone running into dead-ends and hearing empty promises from lousy parents.

See Razor Wire

 
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Posted by on February 11, 2010 in American Public Schools, Education, Parenting, Public School, substitute teaching, Teaching

 

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About Bullies – Part 2/3

08 Feb

“What would you do if we jumped you, Mr. Lofthouse?”

My response was always the same. I’d say, “I wasn’t trained to fight. The Marines trained me to kill and that’s what I did in Vietnam. So, I will do my best to kill anyone who attacks me. If you or anyone else wants to jump me, do your best to put me out of action as fast as possible, because I’m going to do everything I can to kill the first person inside my reach.”

“You can’t do that,” was the common response.  As if the rules or laws in this “politically correct” country were on the side of the criminal, bully or gang banger.  Although the death penalty is another topic, it seems that those politically correct and properly anointed people that go out of the way protecting the rights of hard-core violent criminals should be boiled in oil.  After thirty minutes naked in boiling oil from toes to chin, if they live, we do what they want.

What bothered me the most was that I couldn’t carry a weapon.  In Vietnam, I carried several weapons and grenades.  Several times, I had a grenade launcher.

 See Bullies Part 1

 
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Posted by on February 8, 2010 in American Public Schools, American Street Gangs, Education, Public School, Teaching

 

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About Bullies – Part 1/3

07 Feb

I don’t have respect for bullies (“bullies are kids who have tremendous low self-esteem”). That’s probably one of the reasons why I joined the Marines after high school—so I would be tougher and more dangerous.  Most bullies are cowards and won’t fight if they think you will stand up to them. Bullies also tend to be organized like a pack of wolves (no insult to wolves, but that is a fact). There are two types of bullies: the physical kind and the verbal kind, who enjoy belittling kids that don’t appear capable of defending themselves.  Some bullies fit both descriptions.

Then there is the pack of what appeared to be normal kids who will ostracize an individual who doesn’t fit into an acceptable social group.  When I was teaching, I usually stood up for the outcast too.

I was a victim of bullies in grade school and ostracized by the social butterflies in high school. As a teacher, every year, at least one mouthy bully, usually a member of a local street gang, Puente 13, would ask, “What would you do if we jumped you, Mr. Lofthouse?

Kids that bully or ostracize others that do not fit the social norm remind of a flock of chickens that will peck the runt of the flock to death.

What set off this series of posts on bullies was a piece on Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected.

 
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Posted by on February 7, 2010 in American Street Gangs, Education, Parenting, Teaching

 

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