What the increasingly oppressive climate in many schools is doing to kids
Leslie Gaar is a former teacher who currently works in public schools training and coaching teachers. She is also the mother of three and a blogger whose work has been featured on Scary Mommy, TODAY Parents, and Mamalode. She blogs at www.pailsandfires.com. Find her on Facebook and Twitter. In this post, she wrote about something that she disturbs her every time she sets foot into an elementary school these days: what she calls an “increasingly oppressive, harsh environment” in which many young students are educated.
By Leslie Gaar
The speaker used a firm tone of voice that left little room for discussion.
In 30 seconds, everyone should be in line.Ten.Five.Time is up.Everyone stand up, hands behind your back, walk back to the room.NO TALKING.
This conversation was one I recently overheard not in a prison or detention center, not in a courthouse or police station, but in an elementary school– a typical, run-of-the mill elementary school in the suburbs. It happened between a kindergarten teacher and her students. They weren’t in trouble or anything; this was just a routine bathroom break, like the ones that happen a few times each school day.
I work in public schools and can be found navigating their halls on a regular basis. I wish I could say the conversation above was an isolated incident, not representative of other schools I have been in, but that is just not the case. I’ve seen and heard exchanges like this hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, in all sorts of schools– even the “good” ones. As a teacher, I myself participated in these types of interactions daily, but it wasn’t until recently that I began seeing them in a whole new light.
A bit of history: I was a classroom teacher for eight years before taking a break to stay home with my children. When I returned to the education field a couple of years later, it was in a different capacity than before. I began training and coaching teachers, as well as working with administrators to promote best practices on their campuses. This role shift has given me a different perspective on an environment which was as familiar to me as my own skin, and it continues to be eye-opening in a number of ways.
Out of this experience, a question began to bubble up inside of me and has continued to swell so that I can no longer ignore it. That question is this:When did we start running elementary schools like prisons?
When did it become both accepted and routine to address 5 years olds (and 6 and 7 year olds) with barking orders instead of kind, encouraging words? Was it really that long ago that our own kindergarten and first grade classrooms were filled with the sounds of nursery rhymes, laughter, and children at play? Is the world today really so different than it was 20 or even 15 years ago that it warrants a new, harsher brand of education?
I don’t entirely know the answer, but I suspect that one culprit, among others, What the increasingly oppressive climate in many schools is doing to kids - The Washington Post: