Opus 2012-223, Discernment Watch: Teacher of the Year

Back in June I was driving to work as a public school teacher.  I noticed a billboard put up by a local college about one of their alumni.  Evidently she had been awarded recognition as California School Superintendent of the year in 2011.  About the same time I received our California Teachers Association monthly propaganda mouthpiece.  It had an article about the CTA teacher of the year.  Shortly after that I was reading an article on line about a teacher who had received a Teacher of the Year award from either his school or district.  That wasn’t the focus of the article.  The article was about how he had just been arrested for posting pictures of himself nude on the internet.  Now THAT is what I call finding ways to relate to the children on a level they can understand.

Awards.  They can be significant or fluff.  We need to be discerning about them.  We need to learn to ask a few questions.  We need to ask such things as, “Who gave the award?  Who set the standards?  Who evaluated it?”  In reality when people are patting themselves on the back the results are rather meaningless. 

Let me give you an example.  On our district we had a principle who received the Middle School Administrator of the Year award.  That sounds impressive until you realize there are only three three middle schools in town. 

Not exactly a Nobel Prize, but then the Nobel Prize is no longer the Nobel Prize.

Actually that is probably a good example of how to view these things.  Remember that Yasar Arafat, world renowned terrorist, received the Nobel Peace Prize.  Remember that Al Gore received some kind of Nobel Prize for his ground breaking lies about global warming.  And of course you remember that our president received a Nobel prize.  He was nominated long before he was even elected.  Why?  He had never done anything but write two autobiographies.  And it wasn’t the Nobel Prize for Literature he received. 

It starts in your local school.  You didn’t know that, did you.  I am sure you have seen the bumper stickers and lawn signs about student of the month or some such synonym.  I am sure that our school is typical.  When it started each teacher was supposed to pick two students a month.  I participated at first.  We had a little reception before school, invited the parents, served light refreshments and said a few nice things about the kids.  Then came the day when we were told that no child could receive the award twice.  It kept going down hill.  In the last assembly we had one teacher that called her entire class up and awarded them student of the month.

Awards are nice if they mean something but in our feel-good, self-esteem culture they are losing any contact with reality.  However, since there is a large check involved, feel free to nominate me for a Nobel Prize.  I will even write a few autobiographies if that will help.

homo unius libri