The Summer of Our Discontent

I think school is out most places now. Both "School's Out" and "Back to School" cartoons have a problem of timing, since the actual events can vary by about a month depending on location. 

But they also have a problem of "same old same old," and Deflocked sidesteps that today with a gag that goes beyond the standard "glad the year's over" into "why do I do this to myself?" territory.

I've told the story before of the burned-out teacher who finally hit retirement, to the delight of her co-workers and administrators. They threw her a party, after which she packed her car and drove home, only to find a message on her answering machine from the district office, saying they had miscalculated and she was one year shy of retirement.

True story: I heard it from her principal and the guidance counselor, and I knew who they meant.

Funny in the abstract, not so funny in the real world.

Another principal told me that every administrator has a list of burned-out teachers who don't do anything egregious enough to let you fire them but who act as drags on the things everyone else in the school is trying to accomplish. Each principal, he said, ticks off the days until those burnouts will retire as a prisoner scratches hashmarks on the wall of his cell.

It's not an issue of tenure. It's hard in any organization to get rid of someone who performs at a low but acceptable rate. You can deny them rewards and recognition and such, but, unless they screw up, you can't force them to quit.

Theoretically? Sure.

In the real world? Not without an inadvisable level of harrassment.

Frazz does an interesting dance around the topic with Mrs. Olson, who fluctuates between being burned out and being someone who cares but is inept at passing along the things she wants to impart. It's hard to maintain a major character on one dimension, but risky to offer too many alternative takes.

I may be the only person who feels M*A*S*H lept a major shark when they turned Hotlips into a sympathetic character, but Jef Mallett risks the same thing with Mrs. Olson and manages to pull it off. If she becomes loveable, Caulfield has nobody to play off of, while, if she remains a harpy, she stops being an interesting foil.

 

Mr. Fitz is written by an actual teacher who does other, more professionally-oriented writing, and the title character lives in a perpetual state of perplexed dismay, as in today's strip, often over the sort of psychobabble and empty rhetoric that replaces actually encouraging and helping good teachers to teach.

It doesn't help that so many people think they know how it works. As I've often said, it would be foolish to think that, because you've eaten in a restaurant, you are qualified to be a chef, but a lot of people seem to view education that way.

But, having visited hundreds of schools and sat in on too many school board meetings, I've seen what it's like to be under the scrutiny of people who think, having been students, that they know how to be teachers.

Well, in any case, school is out now, at least where it's not year-round. Most teachers will take a week or two to relax after those 16-hour days that nobody but their families see, and then will plunge into continuing ed courses or teaching summer school or researching and writing lesson plans for the next year, which we will know is coming when Staples starts running those ads of delighted parents being thrilled to no longer have to care for their kids.

 

Speaking of Burnout ...

Brazilian cartoonist Amorim offers this look at the upcoming Olympics in Rio, where the local government has declared a financial emergency. 

I'm a little surprised that the negative coverage of Brazil's Olympics has focused so much on the Zika virus. Granted, a lot of Olympic athletes are in the age group for having children, but it's not like Zika lurks in your system like malaria, and the risk, however great, is temporary. It's not a rational reason to stay home.

And there's plenty else to discuss.

When it was announced, a few years ago, that Brazil would host both the World Cup and the Olympics in one fell swoop, there was considerable commentary about how ill-positioned the nation was economically to pull it off.

In the run-up to the World Cup, this theme came up repeatedly, perhaps because FIFA was imploding at the moment from its own fiscal misbehavior.

But the fact that FIFA got caught in a web of bribery and malfeasance shouldn't distract the watchdogs from wondering how Olympic venues are awarded, because that, too, has given off an aroma of corruption over the years.

And it's not as if, between the World Cup and now, Brazil has put its own house in order; quite the opposite. You would think -- at least, I would think -- that this would bring questions of Olympic readiness to the forefront, but, beyond a few stories about how some of the boating events will take place in raw sewage, I've seen very little.

So I'll suggest that you revisit this interactive piece that ran before the World Cup ...

 

... and this piece by the same reporter.

Apparently, construction of venues is pretty much on schedule, but is that really the point?

I'm betting that things haven't improved a whole lot for the average Brazilian, much less for the residents of the favelas, who were supposed to be relocated to wonderful new quarters elsewhere.

Perhaps they were.

And perhaps, by the time the Games begin, the waters will be crystal-clear and bacteria-free.

 

Now here's my moment of lightening up ferchrissake

 

 

Comments

[Dave from Philadelphia]

Hi Mike. You wrote, "But, having visited hundreds of schools and sat in on too many school board meetings, I've seen what it's like to be under the scrutiny of people who think, having been students, that they know how to be teachers."

I concur that school board directors are way over their heads when they start to dictate minutia teaching policy rather than dealing with overall policy and money issues. And then you have the issue of football stadiums vs. arts programs, etc. Some school districts seem to keep the balance pretty well and then ... there are the others.

But, I struggle to think of a better alternative. Charter schools have less reporting obligations to school districts/boards, and this has really not led to sustained improvements for the attendees of those schools. Some are great and some fail. The rest are in the middle. Which is about the same as schools that report to school boards ... except for urban schools which now a-days are mostly run by state appointed Superintendents and even state appointed school boards. One could argue that that shows that an "expert school board" is not the answer. But I think their failures are likely a lack of sustained, adequate funding.

What do you think would work better?

[gezorkin]

Education has become an industry, with all the ladder climbing, pension spiking, etc., that goes on in every industry. It's at every level, teachers, staff, administration, and district office. School boards are often stepping stones to higher office.

Children/students are mainly the raw materials for the industry.

Easy to identify the problem(s), but I don't know the solution.