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Modern Education's Crowning Achievement: Bad Teachers Printable Version

by Jason Roth

When I look back to my days incarcerated in the educational system, it is just way too easy to think of way too many bad teachers. This, let me remind you, is the group of people that dares to bitch and moan about being underpaid. My ass. They're overpaid. They should take their three months vacation and shut their damn traps.

Some of the stupidest people I ever met were school teachers. I still swear my eighth-grade algebra teacher was teaching the subject while she learned it. I learned more about the aerodynamics of paper airplane flight that year than any other, and still passed without a problem.

And if the infamous substitute teacher isn't the world's classic example of a complete and utter idiot, what is?

Sure, there are some good teachers. Just like there are some good politicians. But let's do a little experiment. Think back for a moment. Give yourself a few minutes to remember the teachers that have positively influenced your life. Those individuals of whom the TV commercials and politicians are constantly trying to remind us. Those wonderfully unflawed, self-sacrificial helpers of society. Those underpaid, overworked, last-remaining bastions of free thinking.

I'm sorry. Let me apologize for making you waste those precious seconds.

Now think of something else. Think of the teachers who were mean, lazy, ignorant, or moronic. I bet it takes you half the time to think of just as many. These are the teachers that you would be perfectly ambivalent to see writhing in pain under the wheels of a school bus, ground into the hot blistering tar like any other common rodent.

The point is, bad teachers are some of the most incompetent and/or stupid and/or mean people in existence.

How did I possibly come to this conclusion? Everyone has their own empirical evidence, but here's more of mine:

• A history teacher that was cool because he listened to bands like 10,000 Maniacs, but didn't succeed in teaching a single historical fact in the entire freshman year of high school.

• A balding, flabby, comatose math teacher that turned the art of logic, reasoning, and utilizing the power of the human mind into a task more laborious and revolting than crawling through 100 yards of human feces.

• A middle-aged teacher much in need of a facelift, but who nevertheless was well-loved for her "down-to-earth" teaching style, not to mention her fifty-minute bull session otherwise known as an "honors" English class.

• A seventy-year-old braces-wearing witch that was more interested in making the students follow rules than actually helping them learn.

• An Ellsworth Toohey type (see The Fountainhead) that took pleasure in using his film class to indoctrinate unknowing college students into accepting "we are our brother's keeper" as a mantra for living.

It wasn't until college - outside of regular classes - that I truly realized the potential excitement of learning.

If I ever had a teacher that displayed half the ability of Leonard Peikoff during his Ford Hall Forum lecture "A Philosopher Looks at the O.J. Verdict", I'd be jumping for joy. (Unfortunately, if you're like most people, you never even heard of Leonard Peikoff.)

Imagine, to my amazement, that organized learning could be, dare I say it, fun?

If there's one message I can give to any person reading this who is currently in school, it's this: Just get through it.

Yes, school sucks. But whatever you do, don't ever let yourself come to the conclusion that learning sucks. Learn on your own if you have to. Pick up a copy of Ayn Rand's Anthem, The Fountainhead, or Atlas Shrugged. Do it, if only to prove to yourself that the use of your mind can be an invigorating, beautiful experience. Do it, to see that the total absorption of ideas is possible.

Never let yourself accept the bullshit that your teachers - wittingly or unwittingly - are teaching you: That the use of your mind is drudgery, and the only thing that can actually bring you enjoyment is getting drunk and hooking up at a keg party. And I'm not telling you not to do that either. Just don't give up on what's really important. Decide what you're interested in, and set your mind on that.

The hell with teachers. The hell with school. You have a right to educate yourself despite them. If you need some inspiration to self-teach, look to two of my own personal heroes: Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption and Rubin Carter in The Hurricane.

Find a book that interests you. I can tell you from personal experience that much of the literature you've been assigned in school is the lowest rung on a long ladder of shit. If I wasn't as generous as I am, I might even say the stuff was written purposely to foster a hatred of reading.

For bad teachers, there's nothing like having around a bunch of helpless, ignorant fools to help them evade their own ignorance and gutlessness for never having tried the real career they dreamed about in their youth. For the leaders that rule you, there's nothing like having around a bunch of helpless, ignorant fools to rule.

Don't give them what they want. And don't stoop to the non-intellectual level on which they want you to reside: the level of the violent losers who can't deal, so feel they need to enact their school-induced fantasies on their fellow inmates - either through physical violence or governmental violence. (I.e., using the government to forcibly obtain what they're now unmotivated to earn themselves.) If you're having these kinds of fantasies, it's time to acknowledge the pleasure you can get from actual education, outside of school.

Sure, we all have fantasies. I do. Personally, I prefer the one with a special guest appearance by Denise Richards. I bet that woman could revolutionize the field of education.

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