Monday, November 17, 2003
(5:51 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
For the attention
Substitute teaching in Kankakee is a lot less fun than in Bradley. Part of the problem is the cultural difference -- whereas I can recognize jerky white high school guys with no problem, immediately cutting straight through their "funny" or "confident" exterior, the jerky black high school guys are harder. All their antics are a lot fresher to me, and thus a lot funnier. It's difficult to be an authority figure when I sincerely admire the wit that the kids pretty consistently show. It's also hard to be an authority figure when I'm repeating the assignment for the third time, the kids are all showing no evidence that they are listening, and some kid yells out, "We heard you the first time!" -- at which point I respond, "Don't be an asshole."
Also, I know there's a huge segment of the porn industry, and an even huger segment of the "normal" entertainment industry, dedicated to the fantasy that high school girls are the gold standard of desirability, but I frankly don't buy it. Except for the occasional day when I'm subbing for seniors, I very rarely see more than two girls in the high end of the "cute" category, because they're all fourteen and fifteen! The "hot" high school girls all -- I know this is going to be hard to take for some of the guys out there -- look a lot older. High school girls who actually look their own age fit into the general pattern of high school people who look their own age -- that is, they look awkward and half-developed and acne-pocked.
Most girls, in my humble opinion, are not going to hit the prime of their attractiveness until their early twenties, and which point they'll probably be a lot more mature, knowledgable, and generally self-aware -- or is that what we're trying to avoid with the whole "high school girls are hot" thing?
I think I'll stop there, because I'm teetering on the edge of a slippery slope that will end with me saying that forty-year-old women, due to their greater experience, should be the gold standard of desirability for men who wish to take the moral high ground. It also just occurred to me that perhaps our society is doing irrevocable damage to these high school girls by throwing them to the dogs -- that is, the high school guys. Maybe all the guys eagerly awaiting that one scene with the cheerleader in American Beauty were fantasizing about how great it would be to get together with a high school girl -- for humanitarian reasons.
Okay, but what I really intended to say in this post was that in such classrooms, I know that no meaningful schoolwork is going to take place simply because of my authority. There are self-motivated people in all but the most abyssmal classes, and they're going to do their work more or less consciensiously no matter how badly their classmates behave. No worksheet, which is all that a sub is ever going to have to work with, is ever going to inspire students to greater academic heights. In fact, if I were to be completely honest, I think that the "busywork" phenomenon is the single greatest failing of our school system, and I'm ashamed to have to be a part of it. So why is it that I try to get the class to be completely silent sometimes? Why is it that I want to know for sure that the students are all listening as I tell them their teacher's bullshit busywork instructions for the day, arguably the least important thing they will ever hear in their lives?
I do it for the attention. It annoys me that I'm "officially" the authority figure in a room full of thirty people and yet can be thoroughly and rigorously ignored by all but a few habitual suck-ups. Ironically enough, since my only rationale for enforcing discipline is a purely personal desire to be obeyed, vigorous attempts to get everyone's attention will more than likely create a worse discipline situation, since all but the most cowardly "honors" kids are going to have the balls to call me out on it. In short, I arrive at the whole reason that I even want to substitute teach: I can sit back and get paid for reading a book, because for the most part no matter what I do, it just is not going to matter.
