No Teachers, No Pirate

Well, the news on the island is interesting, to say the least. The first thing that happened didn’t happen—to me at least. Sometime after midnight yesterday, we got hit with an earthquake of 6.5 on what used to be called the Richter magnitude scale. And why, by the way, did we have to get rid of Richter and instill somebody whose name my aged brain will probably never learn? Doesn’t seem right….

Well, the quake happened although it didn’t, since neither Mr. Fernández nor I felt it. There have been, however, 224 aftershocks—also undetectable—including a quake of 4.16 today.

OK, the island is rattling around in the Caribbean. Anything else?

Well, the teachers are on strike, and The New Day has this to say:

No hay clase en ninguna escuela del país

Right—no classes in any school of the island. But using impeccable logic, the superintendent of our schools pointed out that just because the teachers, in many cases, stayed home resting (well, wouldn’t you, if you were a teacher?)—it doesn’t mean that they supported the strike.

In fairness, he may be right—there’s a lot of anger floating down the school hallways and—now—out onto the picket lines. And most parents kept their kids at home, fearing perhaps that there would be reprisals if they showed up with their kids. Who knows?

The New Day also reports that the principle of one school arrived to find the gates padlocked, and not having keys, she summoned the police, who arrived and said no way—they weren’t going to cut the lock. So—resourceful lady—she summoned a private security guard, who went at the gates with something or other, and who succeeded in not so much felling the gate as siding it. But as you can see below, the principle as well as some cafeteria workers succeeded in hopping into the school grounds. Oh, and you should definitely watch the clip, because where else will you see a true, Puerto Rican protest? (You can watch the video here.)

It took some getting used to, but I now love it. Whereas furious workers in Northern climates march silently with signs, what do we do? We’re out there with all the parranda stuff, the tambourine, the little wooden sticks, the güiro—a dried gourd that gets scratched. And everybody is out there dancing and singing—which has to be done, to keep the ánimo up. Very important, the ánimo….

At any rate, the teachers declared that the principle had treasoned (well, computer, había traicionado—what are you going to do with it?) them and they were deceptioned (works in Spanish!).

“Traición, traición cruzaste el portón”, “Tú me dices que me apoyas y te metes en la escuela”, le cantaban a la directora escolar.

(“Treason, treason, you crossed the gate,” “You tell me you support me and you put yourself in the school,” they were singing to the school principle.)

Well, the governor has just announced that only 12 percent of the teachers showed up to teach today, while only 178 students showed up to learn. And so it will be tomorrow, since the strike is 48 hours, unless, of course, it isn’t. One doesn’t know, and that’s how it is in the tropics. See?

In the meantime, where’s everybody’s favorite pirate, Carlos Laster? Because this gentleman makes his living—as much as he does—by dressing up as a pirate and walking the streets. And very fetching he is, as you can see below….

Nor does Carlos ever, ever ask for money, when—as very frequently they do—the boat people flood our streets (we’re a cruise ship hub—and tourists periodically invade the old city and stand with their mouths agape on sidewalks for hours at a time. Therefore you walk between the parked cars and the passing cars—at least you hope they’re passing…..)

Now where was I?

Oh, tourists—they like to have their picture taken with a pirate, wouldn’t you? And Carlos graciously agrees, and then takes his hat off, bows, and states, “donations are greatly appreciated.” This isn’t soliciting, it’s just asking for a donation—anybody can see that.

Anybody but Matos, the guard up at the Federal Fort, El Morro; Matos got it into his head that Carlos was on Federal ground—absolutely ridiculous—and that he was soliciting—poppycock. So Matos grabbed Carlos by the cape—what pirate doesn’t have a cape?—and dragged him onto Federal grounds. Then Matos pulled out his gun and told Carlos he was being cited for soliciting and resisting arrest. Then he interrogated Carlos for half and hour, and essentially forced him to sign the citations. (Carlos—not the wisest move….) So yesterday Carlos went to court, and did he have a lawyer? Of course not, what pirate has a lawyer?

“We’ve absolutely got to bake a cake with a file in it,” I’m telling Lady, the owner of the café where I work (dear Readers, the street outside my house has been redone and is finished, so what new ways have they dreamed up to create noise and confusion? Well, they decided to renovate the building across the street—so the jackhammers moved back in, and go off merrily at 6AM….)

“We could get all the poets together from poetry night and go to the Federal Jail,” said Lady.

“We could storm it, just like the Bastille,” I say.

We’re both totally into it, and Mendoza-who-is-not-Montalvo (though he pretended to be for months) joins us.

“Where’s Carlos,” we asked.

But nobody knows. Can it be that he’s been…

…pirated away?

A Christmas Reform

It was close and it was bitter, but last night the senate approved the “reform” of the teachers’ retirement plan.

In fact, it couldn’t have been closer—since it passed 14 to 13 with four members of the ruling Popular party breaking ranks and voting no. And the final product wasn’t entirely without a few sweeteners. For one thing, teachers over 55 with 30 years of service actually got an increase in the minimum pension to $1625, and there’s a window for teachers with 28 to 30 years to retire with 70% of their monthly salary. Oh, and teachers got a raise of $25, as well.

“They haven’t been doing their jobs,” said a friend, just now. Her child is being home-schooled, but parents who can afford it send their kids to private schools. Why? Because if Missi or Míster—as teachers are known here; it’s a Puerto Rican thing—is sick, the school lets the kids go home. Or maybe home, since nobody may be there; so that means the streets. So if—unreasonably—you insist on knowing where your kids are and what they are doing, you shell out eight to ten thousand per kid per year for a private school.

Well, somebody came out and said it, namely an adviser to the president of the House; and here, dear Readers, are his intemperate words:

“Faltan cada rato. Trabajan cinco horas diarias. Tienen 60 días de vacaciones al año. Ganan más que el salario promedio anual. No pagan seguro social. Salen de la escuela antes que los estudiantes. Llevan 15 años con los mismos planes y materiales. Ah, pero ni pal car...jo le pidas que pongan de su parte porque te muerden, te gritan suciedades y te rompen las puertas. Sí. Así son”, dijo Hernández en una entrada a su cuenta el pasado 19 de diciembre.

El mismo día, Hernández declaró: “Y si después de pasar por 12 años por 12 manos de diferentes maestros no aprendes inglés, agradece a un maestro o a los 12 que no hicieron ningún esfuerzo por lo que se les paga”.

(“They call in sick. They work 5 hours a day. They have 60 days of vacation a year. They earn more than the average annual salary. They don’t pay Social Security. They leave the school before the students. They’ve spent 15 years with the same lesson plans and school materials. But don’t frigging ask them to do their part because they bite you, shout obscenities and break down the doors. Yup, that’s how it is,” said Hernández in an entry on his Facebook page on 19 December.

The same day, Hernández declared, “And if after 12 years of passing through 12 hands of different teachers you don’t know English, thank a teacher or the 12 who didn’t make any effort to do what they’re paid for.”)

Understandably, the teachers were howling—nor did it help that Hernández has a contract for $84,000, whereas the base salary for teachers is $21,000. Hernández’s boss came out and stated that the opinions were not his nor the House’s, and that he regretted that such expressions had been made.

Did Hernández back down? Nope, he responded to The New Day’s lead—which used the word insulto and yes, it means what you think—and said this:

No he insultado a nadie. Di mi opinión basada en mi experiencia en las escuelas donde han estudiado mis hijos. Sin faltar respeto a nadie". 

(“I haven’t insulted anybody. I gave my opinion based on my experience in the schools where my children have studied. There was no lack of respect for anyone.”)

Well, the governor has just signed the legislation, and the teachers? They’re threatening a strike, which—according to the governor—is unconstitutional.

It’s the usual story: who is to blame for the sorry situation we’re in? The usual culprits…

…everyone and no one!

On Schools and Teaching

It all started yesterday, when I began to realize that the conservative right—the Tea Partiers who have us by the short hairs and are dragging us ever closer to the financial cliff—have now set their sights on education. And why not? The idea is attractive for many reasons. There’s money, there, for one thing. How much? Well, according to the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, 380 billion dollars.  Oh, and what better time to instill a little conservative ideology? Let’s not forget old St. Ignatius: give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man for life, or words to that effect.

And if you read Diane Ravitch, a professor of the history of education at New York University, you’ll find out: the prevailing theory is that our public schools are failing. But is it true?

Ravitch says no—nor is it an opinion that she’s held long. In fact, she served in the first George W. Bush administration, and supported the No Child Left Behind program. What was not to like? The idea of standardized testing, quantifiable results, strict accountability—wow, great stuff.

So what happened? Well, teachers got the message—better teach to the test, because your evaluation, or maybe even your job, depends on your results. So what happened? The teachers crammed the info into the kids—and what happened to the subjects like art and history and music and science? Sorry—the focus was reading and math.

In addition, there have been reports of…well, Let the Huffington Post tell the story:

The indictment last week of 35 teachers and administrators in Atlanta for manipulating test scores is just the latest chapter in that city's long festering "teacher cheating" scandal. In turn, Atlanta is just one of many cities where evidence has surfaced that educators fudged testing data.

Perhaps the best way to think of these cheating scandals is that they are the result of a natural experiment: What happens when you change incentives so that low test numbers translate into pain and high test numbers translate into rewards?

OK—so teachers will cheat if their jobs depend on it. And why shouldn’t they? Because, according to Ravitch, they’re a pretty demoralized bunch right now. There was a time when parents took their kids to school on the first day of class, and made the following speech to the teacher—though it really was to the kid: “my child gives you any problems, you smack a good one, and send a note home. I’ll beat the tar out of him…..”

And we don’t want to go back there, tantalizing as the phantasy might be. But the larger question is what we are asking our teachers to do, and with what resources? It used to be that kids were generally better behaved, a teacher had broader range of disciplinary tools, and could teach pretty much how she saw fit. Oh, and that was all she had to do. Now, she has to be a psychologist, social worker, nurse, and then—at the end of a long, long school year—get told that her kids didn’t score the additional five points that an educational psychologist had decided was appropriate.

So what’s happened to our schools since No Child? Well, we’ve certainly created a huge testing industry, which has made some people rich. But what has it taught the kids? How to take tests.

Nor is Obama’s program, Race to the Top, much of a change from No Child. It, too, puts lots of emphasis on testing, with the difference that if the school consistently fails, then bam! It turns into a charter school. And according to Ravitch, Race to the Top puts the blame for poor scores squarely on the teacher.

But is that fair? What does a teacher do when confronted with a hungry, sleepless kid who has spent the night in a homeless shelter? In fact, what correlates with poor performance in school? Poverty.

Right—so how does Ravitch feel about charter schools? Well, she’s not impressed. According to her, charter schools tend to “skim,” selecting the best students, and consigning the learning disabled, non-English speaking, to the public system. And why not? They have a product to turn out—wouldn’t you select the best raw material?

Ravitch suggests two things: first, that we get rid of the high-stakes testing, and second, that we regulate charter schools more, so that they admit everyone, not just the best students.

However well or badly the schools, either charter or public, are doing—I wonder if compared to seventy years ago they are much better. I took a 5^th grade test, recently, from 1930, in which I was asked through what bodies of water I would pass if I went by sea from Malaga, Spain, to the Philippines. Errr—don’t think I got full credit on that one….

It can be argued—is it producing anything of worth to know the answer to the question above? Do kids really need to know this, much less adults? Wouldn’t learning how to read a map be of more use?

Yes and no. I think that there has to be a certain amount of basic information that is drummed into a kid’s head. Anybody should be able to figure out a 15% tip in a restaurant, without having to resort to the calculator on his cell phone.

So it may be the work of childhood to learn where the Philippines are, what the capital city is, and the five main exports. But something happens when a child becomes an adolescent: he or she becomes capable of abstract thought.

Tracy Kidder wrote a book about teaching, in which the teacher struggled to get through her curriculum, and in fact never really made it. At one point, the teacher worries that her students are going to go through life never knowing who won the Civil War….

Here’s what I think: in elementary school, you learn the fact: the North won. In short, you learn answers. In High School, you ask the questions: didn’t the South have the right to secede? To what extent was this was based on a principle: the freeing of slaves? Wasn’t there also an economic basis for this war? And what would have happened if England….

In short, you learn questions.

I’m officially on the fence about charter schools. If they work, I’m for them. Having worked for the largest company in the world, I’m a little uncertain that the corporate model is appropriate for education. The only things I am sure of?

That education of our kids is a lot more important than making money. And that any system—public or private—that fosters inequality because of race or socio-economic status is heinous.