Blaming the Teacher

The world was better in the olden days. That's an article of faith among many Americans - and you will forgive me if I point out that it has been an article of faith for years and years and years. The "good ol' days" used to mean the period before World War I, or sometimes the 1920s. These days, though, the good ol' days have jumped forward to the fifties and the early sixties.

Ah, the Eisenhower/Kennedy years! A delightfully "innocent time," we read in Pete Hamill's review of the new book out about Willie Mays. A time when "anything and everything seemed possible," according to another book I recently ran across. A wonderful era when we had good old-fashioned values, when video games were nonexistent, when families ate dinner together every single night. Never mind the occasional problems: sexism, racism, McCarthyism, pollution, nuclear proliferation; it was the good ol' days, by golly, and everything was better back then.

As a teacher, I am especially tuned toward a particular mantra regarding the grandeur of the fifties/early sixties, which is that this era was the Golden Age of K-12 education. Everybody learned to read, quickly and easily. Everybody got really good at math. And in particular, the fifties-slash-early-sixties were a time when the education profession was respected, when parents and kids alike viewed teachers as professionals to be listened to and admired, not as lackeys to be walked all over and to be blamed for children's failures. Read the columns of child psychologist John Rosemond, just to name one strong proponent of this notion. Well, okay, I'll quote here from a typical Rosemond column, to save you the trouble of tracking them down yourself:

Back in the day, writes Rosemond, "when a child was reported to have made trouble in school, the child came home to even more trouble. Today, when a child is reported to have made trouble in school, the parents deny that the child is capable of making trouble, blame the teacher for having a 'personality conflict' with the child or failing to recognize the child's 'special needs' or 'boring' the child. In short, the school/teacher is in trouble."

Anyhow, I was reminded of this mantra while reading the Peanuts strip that appeared in the morning paper. I'm not sure how long this link will work, so I'll summarize the cartoon in addition to linking to it.

http://comics.com/peanuts/?DateAfter=2010-03-15&DateBefore=2010-03-15&Order=d.DateStrip+ASC&PerPage=1&x=7&y=8&Search=

Linus is distressed to find that he has failed to make the honor roll at school. Sweat pouring off his face and his wildish hair looking even more wild than usual, he tells Charlie Brown that he is "doomed," that his parents will be shocked and disappointed. (So far, so Rosemond.) Charlie Brown asks Linus what he thinks will happen, to which Linus replies, "Well, obviously, the first step will be to put in a complaint about the teacher."

The original publication date on the strip? March, 1963.

Oh. Okay. Perhaps things haven't changed as much as we thought.