What we have is a system driven to create the illusion of education without the inconvenience of learning. –Shane Trotter, Setting the Bar

Most would agree that the illusion of anything is obviously a poor substitute for the real thing. High school teacher and author, Shane Trotter, makes a bold claim that our current educational system is driven to create the illusion of education. And bolder still? He argues that we believe we can educate students without the inconvenience of learning. For Trotter–and many others–American education is a far cry from the real thing.

Recently, I was struck by the title of an essay written by California high school civics teacher, Jeremy S. Adams: “My Late Father Was a Great Teacher. He Wouldn’t Last a Week in the Modern Classroom.” Like Trotter, Adams bemoans the current state of education, insisting that one of the greatest teachers he’d known–his own father–wouldn’t be able to navigate classrooms in which he was expected to educate without the inconvenience of learning. In the midst of nationwide calls for retired teachers to fill desperately-needed teaching positions, Adams’ essay suggests that, like his father, many of these retired teachers would struggle to last a week in classrooms today. Clearly, some with strong constitutions might be able to muscle their way through five school days, keeping students physically in their desks and maintaining some sort of order. But would they be able to teach?

Adams lovingly paints a portrait of his father as belonging to an elite group of teacher-celebrities who hear superlatives like, “You made a real difference in my life” or “I wouldn’t be where I am today without you.” These teacher-celebrities, he explains, are localized versions of Jaime Escalante or non-fiction avatars of John Keating. After his father died, he writes that he was overwhelmed by the number of letters he received from former students, letters that testified to his father’s unwavering sense of purpose and ubiquitous passion. As not only his son but one of his father’s students, Adams agreed with others who admitted that his father was tough and demanding but that he inspired them to be better than they were.

His father never let his students wear hats or chew gum in class because classrooms were serious places that demanded respectful behavior. He believed that his students could learn and used the Socratic method to discipline them to think more deeply and critically. He did this, as Adams writes, because a good teacher doesn’t tolerate student ignorance or indifference. And to his knowledge, Adams claims that his father never had to apologize for his high standards.

As a literature teacher, his father taught novels, short stories, poems and plays if they were instructive about the human condition. Adams explains:

He never judged literature through a postmodern kaleidoscope of race, gender, or class. He simply asked if the reading was instructive about love or hope or death or dreams. Did it touch on vital and timeless human concerns? Did it connect a young mind to a mature aspiration or did it slightly transform the delicate fiber of youth into something resembling wisdom or fortitude?

But Adams goes on to speculate about what his father would do in today’s classrooms when students cursed at him, and when his adminstrators insisted that he perform a classroom intervention rather than giving them detention or kicking them out. He wonders how his father would handle the incessant disruption of cell phones vibrating and blinking as he tried to hold class. And he suspects that his father wouldn’t take kindly to those who call Shakespeare problematic and grammar unnecessary. In short, he’s painfully aware that the father he knew and admired wouldn’t last a week in a classroom today.

As I read this essay, I couldn’t help but think of the best English teachers I’ve known: my dad, my best friend, my daughter, and a handful of colleagues over my 40-year career. My dad, the single best lecturer I’ve ever known, would probably be put on some kind of evaluative plan today and required to work with an instructional coach. He’s a sage on the stage, they’d proclaim, all talk and no student interaction. And they’d be right that there was a lot of talk in his classrooms, but they would’ve failed to identify the quality of this talk in their shortsighted dismissal of his methods. They would’ve failed to recognize that each class period was a extraordinary invitation for students to interact with the best ideas from the best thinkers of all times. They would’ve failed to understand that student interaction doesn’t always require groups clustered together in beanbag chairs throughout the room with designated learning tasks, but that it may be minds-on interaction–often intensely independent–that occurs when students wrestle with challenging ideas. Most students today genuinely struggle to listen to their teachers for any amount of time. Undoubtedly, they’d tune my dad out after a few minutes or when they encountered the first big word they didn’t understand, whichever came first.

I’ve watched my best friend, my daughter and some of my English teacher colleagues attempt to make the best literary works–and the invaluable ideas in them–accessible for all of their students. I’ve watched them use powerful anecdotes and make excellent allusions. I’ve watched them offer their best, day after day. And, sadly, I know that there are more and more of their students who are, in essence, saying no thank you. No thank you to their attempts to bend over backwards so that students might really understand. No thank you to their offers to meet students before or after class for extra help. No thank you to the comments they’ve painstakingly written on student work and the hours they’ve invested on students’ behalf. No thank you, in short, to almost anything they’re offering because, as students, they’d rather not be inconvenienced to learn.

Is their response exceptional? Blurting out comments–often unrelated and sometimes vulgar–refusing to make eye contact with teachers or peers who are speaking, blatantly using cellphones, coming to class late, leaving for extended periods of time for bathroom breaks, turning in work late or not at all, asking to redo assignments that were, in all truth, thrown together in the first place as drafts–all of this and more are increasingly characteristic in classrooms today. This isn’t the exception but rather the norm. Those like Trotter and Adams who argue that what we’ve created is an illusion of education understand this all too well.

Adams concludes that the greatest educational illusion is that teacher compassion is tantamount to an endless softening of standards, of letting things slide, and of ultimately excusing poor student behavior and performance. This compassion, he argues, is producing a generation of students who want the trophy without the excellence and the “A” without the effort, who insist that high achievement can be accomplished on the cheap. This, he laments, is an illusion his father would not have suffered–for all the right reasons.

In the past few years, I’ve held too many conversations with good teachers who’ve admitted–regrettably–that they don’t know if they’ll be able to last in the classroom much longer, that if they could secure another job with a similar salary and benefits, they’d consider taking it. I’ve talked to too many administrations who complain that they can’t recruit or retain quality teachers and that they’ve had to take what they can get (and hope they can keep them). We have many beautiful educational buildings, more educational initiatives and regulations than you can imagine, and in the end, I’m afraid that the emperor has no clothes.

Let me go on record as saying that our best eductors are knocking themselves out to make a difference to their students, educationally and personally. They always have, and they always will. But theirs is a lonely struggle, and their efforts alone are not enough. As a nation, we’ve paid much lip service to the fact that our educational system needs help. Many insist that we need a system overhaul that begins with honest conversations about what is working and what isn’t. They argue that we must examine why the best teachers of our pasts couldn’t make it in classrooms today and whether or not this is acceptable. And they’re truly frightened by today’s desperate shortage of quality teachers and by the inevitable costs of what it would take to recruit and keep more of them. In the end, many concede that, in spite of our best efforts, we’re creating an illusion of education, one that grows less and less like the real thing with each passing day.

Perhaps the saddest thing of all is the fact that no matter what educational initiative or reform we throw out there, most educators will simply smile and mutter, This, too, shall pass. For they know that initiatives and reforms come and go, and historically, few have had real sticking power. And they’d be right. But our current situation is a watershed moment, I think. We have the opportunity–and the responsibility–to do something different, something better for students, for educators, and for our nation. Only time will tell if we rise to the occasion or continue to settle for an illusion.