The Trouble w/ Education

Jason Snyder
June 27, 2024

This past summer, as I was watching my hometown Denver Nuggets win their first ever NBA championship, I was frequently interrupted by my wife. Our son Tommy was scheduled to matriculate to American University in the fall for his freshman year. Like most concerned mothers, Lisa had joined the American U Facebook group for incoming students. Despite working in the larger world almost her whole adult life, Lisa was stunned by what she saw. She couldn’t believe that post that parents were making.

In a tone that was a cross between amusement and incredulity, she kept reading one after another to me. “”My daughter does better w/ natural light. Is there any way that I can make sure that she gets a southern facing room?” “My son didn’t get the English class that he requested. He needs to be in that class. American needs to make certain that he gets the right class” Lisa was incredulous. She said “ Don’t these parents know that their kids are adults now? Don’t these parents know that their kids are going to be in college? Why would they be asking such things” How does this help their kid”

In each instance, I would, like any loving husband, make some non-commital grunt and try to focus on the battle between Nikola Jokic and Anthony Davis unfolding on the television in front of me. Finally, Lisa turned to me and said “how does this not bother you”? Aren’t you an educator” And my response to Lisa was “why do you think I’m leaving education”

For twenty six years I have loved education. I have loved nearly everything about it. My entire career has been spent working with teenagers. Psychologist Amy Fast writes “I am a better person for being around teenagers ... not because they test me, but because they have this perfect balance of unapologetic and fiery strength and unfiltered, raw vulnerability. They are beautiful examples of aliveness. We should all strive for a little more of that”. I believe every word of that statement and I unequivocally believe that I am a better person for having spent my adult life working w/ teenagers.

I have loved working w/ teenagers and teaching history so much that I have asked my family to sacrifice in order to allow me to do my life’s work. Because I have worked in education and not some more lucrative field, my wife has had to bear a greater financial responsibility so that we may live the upper middle class life that we enjoy. Moreover, my kids (we have twin eighteen year old boys) have had to share their father w/ all of the students that I was teaching and administrating that year. It has been a sacrifice for them; but it is a sacrifice that I was willing to ask them to make because education has provided me w/ so much fullfillment. I am not terribly religious (despite having worked in two religious institutions) but I truly believe that I was doing God’s work. I, like many teachers, have over the years saved many of the notes of gratitude that students and parents have written. In fact, I have an entire binder saved w/ “thank yous” that I have received from teachers and parents over the years. This binder serves as a trophy case of sorts-tangible proof that mine was a life well spent. I consider this binder one of my most prized possessions. All of this is to say that being an educator was more than a job for me. It was a passion and a calling and was inextricably (or so I thought) tied to my own identity. For most of my adult life, despite idle (mostly in Febuary) musings, I could not have imagined doing anything else.

I also know that there is something sisyphean about being an educator. The great French writer, Albert Camus writes “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” All good teachers know that much of what we instill in our students will not manifest until years after they leave our charge. Watching students seemingly ignore what we say can be a challenge, but the struggle toward the heights is often enough to keep us happy. We know it’s not always going to be pleasant, and our students are not always going to be filled w/ gratitude. Yet the struggle is often enough to fill our hearts. It certainly was enough to fill mine. For most of my career, one should have imagined me happy.

This sysyphean nature is referenced by many others. Other than Ted Lasso, there may not be a greater muse for teachers than Brene Brown. She writes “Plan on heartbreak.  The only people who don’t have heartbreak in their career are people who don’t have love and passion for what they do.  Heartbreak and criticism are small prices to pay for doing work that you are profoundly in love with.  I find the work of people whose hearts are stretch marked and scarred to be far more profound than people with shiny hearts.” I know of very few teachers who do not walk around w/ scarred hearts. And yet, again, I was happy-fullfilled doing this work.

This year, however, I decided it was time to put all of that aside. I decided to leave education. There were many reasions for this choice. I wanted more time to focus on my health-my weight had ballooned to unhealthy levels. Lisa and I wanted to be able to travel more freely now that the boys would be off at college. Part of me wanted to try and do something else to test if I could be successful in another endeavor. All of that was important, but I’m not sure that it would have been enough to get me to give up education. Ultimately, the reason that I left was that deep down I knew that education had changed.

I realize that at some level, that statement sounds ridiculous, Of course, education is always changing. It needs to evolve to prepare kids for a world that is constantly changing. This is healthy and as it should be. The change, however, in education, to which I refer is distinctly unhealthy. I fear this change will leave our young people drastically unprepared, both psychologically and economically, to navigate the larger world. This change is causing veteran educators to leave the profession in droves and will discourage young, talented people from staying in the profession. This change threatens to undermine the American educational system.

This change to which I refer above is that parents today are unwilling to see their kids struggle-to experience any kind of discomfort. And when discomfort does occur, they demand swift and punitive justice. And this demand is increasingly directed towards educators. To some degree, I get it. Parents are supposed to protect their children and position them for success in later life. This toughest thing for any parent is to watch their kid suffer. I am a parent too and I understand this. The global pandemic clearly exacerbated this dynamic. We had to watch our kids struggle for two years-losing out on many formative experiences and rites of passage that we had taken for granted. This was hard and often left parents feeling helpless. Moreover, the feelings of the pandemic were themselves exacerbated by the resulting politization of the debate around the appropriate response. People on both right and the left felt attacked and victimized for their position on the appropriate response to this pandemic. This dynamic left people exhausted and unwilling to give others the benefit of the doubt. After the pandemic ended, parents werel left feeling that their kids had sacrificed enough and shouldn’t have to feel any more discomfort or be denied things that they want. Again, this is understandable, but how this has continued to manifest is ultimately not healthy for students. This has not lessened as we move away from the pandemic.

Although exacerbated by the pandemic, this change did not begin with the pandemic. In 2015, Stanford Dean of Students Julie Lythcott-Haims wrote about the dangers of helicopter parents. Moreover, adults have been saying foreover how the subsequent generation doesn’t have the same values. Both my father and father-in-law are constantly bemoaning this current generation of young people as not having the same values. For years, I’ve dismissed that as selective memory. We are constantly forgetting the mistakes and disrespect that our generation generally and that we specifically manifest as teachers. Kids, at least in our country, have always been contempetous, or at least indifferent, to school. There is something evolutionary about young people wanting to push boundaries and becoming skeptical of the adults in their life. This allows them to have the confidence to leave their home and make their way in the world. Kids are still the same as when I started my career over a quarter-century ago. They are still the same as when I was a teenager. And I suspect that they are still the same as they have always been. For certain, today’s teenagers have different challenges. But teenagers have always had unique changes that their parents didn’t have to experience. That is not new. What has changed, again, is that parents are unwilling to allow their kids to struggle. They are unwilling to allow their kids to develop the resilience necessary to be successful in later life. This unwillingness has made it impossible for teachers to do their jobs in an effective way.

Take the following story: An old man meets a young man who asks:

“Do you remember me?”

And the old man says no. The young man then tells him that he was his student, and the teacher asks:

“What do you do, what do you do in life?”

The young man answers: “Well, I became a teacher.”

“Ah, like me” says the old man.

“Well, yes. In fact, I became a teacher because you inspired me to be like you.”

The old man, curious, asks the young man how he decided to become a teacher. And the young man tells him the following story:

“One day, a fellow student, came in with a nice new watch, and I decided I wanted it and I was able to steal it from him when he took it off and placed it on his desk. Shortly after, my friend noticed it was gone and alerted our teacher, you, who immediately addressed the class: ‘This student’s watch has been taken during class today. Whoever stole it, please return it.’

I didn’t give it back because I didn’t want to. Then you closed the door and told us all to get up and that you were going to search our pockets one by one until the watch was found. But you told us to close our eyes, because you would only look for his watch if we all had our eyes closed. So we did, and you went from student to student, and had them empty their pockets. When I emptied mine, you found the watch and took it.

You kept checking everyone’s pockets, and when you were done you said ‘open your eyes. We have the watch.’ You didn’t say anything to me and you never mentioned the episode. You never said who stole the watch either. That day you saved my dignity forever. It could have been the most shameful day of my life. I decided right there and then that I would never do anything like that again. You said nothing to me, nor even scolded me or took me aside to give me a moral lesson.

Nonetheless I had received your message clearly. And thanks to you, I understood what a real educator needs to do. Do you remember this episode, professor?

And the professor answers: ‘I remember the situation, the stolen watch, which I was looking for in everyone’s pocket, but I didn’t remember you, because I also closed my eyes while looking.’

This is the essence of teaching:

“If to correct you must humiliate; you don’t know how to teach “

This is a lovely story that is often told to demonstrate the importance of mercy when dealing w/ young people. The teacher went out of his way not to humiliate the young student. The watch was returned to the owner and everyone felt good about the situation. Except that the above situation could never play out this way in a contemporary school.

The parents of the student whose watch was stolen would demand retribution-justice for having the watch stolen. There would be tremendous righteous indignation for the student being a victim-they would want justice. Any attempt to appeal to the well being of the perpetrator would be lost in this indignation. Any appeal for mercy or understanding for whatever the other student was going through would also be lost in the indignation. The simple fact is that when parents’ own students are victims of a transgression, they demand justice. When parents’ students are the perpetrator, they demand mercy and understanding. There is never a thought to the other students involved. This lack of willingness to consider another’s perspective is part of what’s new. There is little understanding that very little, when dealing w/ kids, is black and white. Kids (like all human beings) are necessarily flawed creatures who will make mistakes. They need to be held accountable, but they also need to be taught lessons of mercy and be given room to grow.

Moreover, there is not any deference to the educator’s expertise. Veteran educators know that most often both are appropriate and helpful in helping students grow in the best way. Schools are about helping students grow; not placed to administer justice. And, of course, this builds on itself. When families feel that their students was not treated mercifully, they are all the more likely to be indignant when their student is the victim in the next instance.

This inability to allow educators both hold students accountable and be understanding is making it difficult for educators to help kids in the way they need. This is very frustrating for educators. Good educators do not want to do investigations and then mete out justice. Worse, this dynamic is not helpful for students. It teaches that the way to deal w conflict is to become indignent and demand retribution. There is no learning of a process to develop interpersonal skills. There is no teaching of empathy and perspective. Moreover, these kids are not learning resilience. They are not learning how to navigate difficult situations that are fraught w challenges. Rather, they are learning that the way to deal w/ problems is to claim victimhood and look for people to bail them out.

The net effect of all of this is that educators, like myself, are becoming disillusioned and either leaving the profession or refusing to engage in the most difficult work w/ students. And students are not allowed to learn the important life skills that are necessary to produce successful adults.

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